Mid-Major Numbers Lie

Mike DeCourcy at the Sporting News calls bull on the bemoaning of Mid-Major bubble teams getting the shaft this year, and especially the way CBS presented the issue.

CBS presented an absolute whopper when it aired a graphic stating the number of "mid-major at-large bids" to the NCAA Tournament had declined from 12 in 2004 to 6 in 2007. This was up on the screen while announcer Seth Davis declared this trend to be "bad for college basketball" because mid-major schools add charm to the event.
Yeah, well, maybe if this trend weren't manufactured, this problem would be a problem.

Let's travel back in time, shall we? We'll go back to the days CBS determined to be the golden days of mid-major basketball: 2003-04. It was a grand time, indeed, when Louisville was a mid-major power.

He makes a good point. If mid-major is being used as shorthand for teams in non-BCS conferences then a lot of the shift can simply be attributed to ACC and Big East expansion. The main programs that were supplying at-large teams were coming from C-USA with Memphis, Louisville, Cinci, Marquette and DePaul. The latter four are now in the Big East. Until that point, Conference USA was a legitimate basketball power conference. They contended regularly for top seeds in the brackets, and no one was calling them a mid-major. There is a certain revisionism to now go back and declare that they were really mid majors.

He also notes that the A-10 was the other conference getting a lot of at-large bids in the 90s and at the start of the 21st century -- UMass, Temple, St. Joe's, Xavier and George Washington late. That's part of the equation for the decline as only Xavier and GW have remained consistently good enough to make the field. In that year, the only at-large bid from a mid-major not in C-USA, A-10 or MWC was Southern Illinois of the MVC.

This year, the 6 mid-major at-large bids came from 6 conferences: Horizon, Colonial, MVC, MWC, WAC and A-10. By the numbers, that makes more sense and "spreads the wealth." I think going by numbers in or out, though, is nothing more then easy shorthand that DeCourcy rightly decried.

I still disagree with DeCourcy's overall conclusion because, as I have written previously, the Selection Committee has made it more difficult for mid-majors to get into the Tournament, because they are changing and shifting standards. This means more favoritism to the BCS conference teams, that have the consistency of stronger conferences to buoy them. It preserves more of a status quo and keeps the other conferences below the majors.

It also means that it is that much harder for the A-10, MVC or MWC to build their overall conference strength when it is being discounted by the NCAA Selection Committee. It means less national exposure and chances to sell the schools and conference to the recruits. And it is still the players that matter for success.