re: sec basketball champs question

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Yes it is up to the conferences. The NCAA doesn't care how you select your champion. Historically, conferences have given the tournament champion the bid in order to give the tournament some meaning. Back in the day S. Carolina was in the ACC and had some great basketball teams that didn't go to the NCAA (only 8 spots available at the time) because they couldn't win the tournament. I'm pretty sure most of the other conf tournaments didn't get added until after the NCAA expanded.

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The ACC and Big 8 (Big 12's predecessor,of course)pretty much always had a tournament. The SEC had won until 1952 and then mothballed it until 1979. The Pac 10 had won for a while in the 80's,dropped it and brought it back. The Big 10 finally put one in over Bob Knight's protests in the late 1990's. The Big East had had one since its inception in the early 1980's.