re: "Cinderallas" are a nice story, but i don't want them in my Final Four

That's not always true. Butler almost beat Duke. Wichita St. almost beat Louisville.

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College basketball and baseball have awesome tournaments to end the year. Underdogs in sports are awesome and always will be.

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I think it's because in both basketball and baseball, beating a team once or getting beat by a team once is no indicator of who the better team is. Football isn't perfect either, but I feel head to head play is much more definitive in that sport.

The ncaa tournament is dumb as shite.


Exciting, but an awful representation on how to pick a champion


Down vote away

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Beating a team once in a one game scenario in basketball, especially if it is the second game in a weekend, isnt that impressive.

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the way the seeds fall however, 99% of the time Cinderella plays a team higher than them, bc the seeds lower than them are on the other side of the bracket and gone. we talk about what UMBC did, but if they had did it again, and they had a real shot to, a 16 beating a 9 is like a 12 beating a 5, and those are big in their own right. George Mason went through a few high seeds in their final four run

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The ncaa tournament is dumb as shite.


Exciting, but an awful representation on how to pick a champion


Down vote away

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Way more often than not, a really good team wins the whole thing.

And for all the hand wringing about "It makes the regular season meaningless" football still fricks it up every year. A committee? It's crazy.

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95% of America disagrees with you

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Check the ratings for games with Cinderella or Final Fours like 2011 with 2 (Butler, VCU) and compare it to matchups with heavyweights.

What people say and what they do doesn’t always match up

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95% of America disagrees with you

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I'd guess that the ratings say he's correct.

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The best college basketball teams are still shitty anyways.

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This year especially.

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Upsets are one of the elements that make the tourney fun to watch, but when it's all said and done, I still want to see the best against the best

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Agreed. First weekend is for upsets. Later rounds are for big boys.

I would rather have seen Kentucky/Arizona in a showdown than Kentucky dragging Buffalo behind the woodshed

Upsets early, chalk late. The second weekend tends to sort things out. Now, this is the most upset heavy tourney ever, but we're still on pace for a fairly chalk Final Four.

If you think of the top 3 seed lines as containing the top 10 teams in the country and thus a "fair champion," the tourney has done a much better job of crowning a champ than you think. Since 1988, which was Manning and the Miracle, the era of the Underdog Champ ended. Since then, only twice has a seed lower than 3 won the title (19997 - 4th seed Arizona and 2014 - 7th seed UConn). And there's only been four 3-seed champs, the most recent in 2011 (UConn, again). 23 of 29 years since '88, a 1 or 2 seed has won the title. 27 of 29 for a top 3 seed.

It's a perfectly fine way to crown a champ.