Sympathy for the Devil

When was the last time you said, even quietly to yourself, "You know, that was a really smart move by the NCAA."? Proactive, smart, thoughtful decision-making. Not words often used in discussing actions by the NCAA.

This is one of those times. The NCAA invited 20 members of the US Basketball Writers Association to come to Indy and pretend to be the NCAA Tournament selection committee for a day. They were given the same tools, resources and information that the committee has.

This was brilliant as at least 20 writers will now be very sympathetic and not complain nearly so much when the seedings are announced.

Take it from this wise guy: I have a new appreciation for the task. Thought I knew what it was like, and I actually had no idea.
We were given 10½ hours to do what the committee does in five days. Except it took us more than 12 hours, from Wednesday afternoon until early Thursday morning, with a short dinner break and a brief escape to watch the end of Duke-North Carolina.

When the going got bogged down, the NCAA staff helped seed many of the lower 45 teams -- and we still couldn't catch up.

That seemed to be the prevailing opinion of every article: this crap's really hard.

Now the only thing smarter, would be to round up 20 or so bloggers and fly them out to Indy for a crack at this.

Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News has a very good breakdown of the timeline of how they go through things. The whole thing even includes mock outcomes from the Conference tournaments.

Then they have their brackets (and here's a PDF version).

After the jump, the list of participating writers and their version of the events (if they've written one)

These are the participating writers in the mock bracket. Linked names, means they did a story on the event.

John Akers, Basketball Times

Mark Alesia, Indianapolis Star

Tony Barnhart, Atlanta Journal Constitution

Wendell Barnhouse, Fort Worth Star-Telegram

Mark Blaudschun, Boston Globe

Rick Bozich, Louisville Courier-Journal

Bryan Burwell, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Mike DeCourcy, Sporting News

Dennis Dodd, CBS Sportsline

Pat Forde, ESPN.com

Marlen Garcia, USA Today

Vahe Gregorian, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

Randy Holtz, Rocky Mountain News

Andy Katz, ESPN.com

Blair Kerkhoff, Kansas City Star

Joe Mitch, United States Basketball Writers Association

Robyn Norwood, Los Angeles Times

Dana O'Neil, Philadelphia Daily News

Tom Shatel, Omaha World-Herald

Steve Wieberg, USA Today