Red Right 88

NCAA gives Cinderella a shocker

Instead of fitting her for a glass slipper, the NCAA gave Cinderella a shocker on Selection Sunday.

Of the 37 at-large bids for the NCAA basketball tournament, only seven went to teams not in major conferences, one fewer than last year even though there were three more spots available in the expanded field.

St. Mary’s, which went 25-8, shared the regular season West Coast Conference title with Gonzaga and lost in the conference title game? Sorry. We need to see four teams that finished at .500 in the Big Ten (Michigan, Illinois, Penn State and Michigan State) instead.

Missouri State, also 25-8 and, at 15-3, the regular season champs of the Missouri Valley Conference? No room for you after your four-point loss in your conference title game. We need to see 14-loss USC, which suspended and then reinstated its coach this week for inappropriate behavior, instead.

And forget about Kent State. Regular season titles and overtime losses in your conference championship game don’t mean anything when you play in the Mid-American Conference. No sir, we need 11 teams from the Big East, including another pair of .500 teams in Villanova and Marquette (both 9-9 in conference play).

This year we’re stuck with five teams with at least 14 losses – all from major conferences – after only having six total make the tournament with that many losses from 1985 to 2010.

What a joke.

The game is obviously rigged to favor the big schools. If you’re from a major conference, you can play your way into the NCAA tournament if you play well in your conference tournament (see Penn State), but you can’t really play your way out (33 points total in a game Wisconsin? Seriously?)

That same opportunity doesn’t exist for the mid-major schools – one slip up and they’re gone.

By not even giving the little guys an opportunity, the NCAA robs fans of the best part of the tournament – seeing an underdog hang close and/or upset a higher-seeded team. Think about it: whenever a lower seed has a second-half lead, the crowd almost always swings its support to the underdog. Just remember Butler’s run to the title game last year.

Wait a minute … that actually may explain this year’s selections. After the Bulldogs came so close to pulling off the biggest upset in tournament history last year, the NCAA must have gotten scared of the thought of a team that’s not at the top of their preferred list winning it all.

Well, they did their best to ensure that won’t happen this year.

Gene Smith, Ohio State’s athletic director and chairman of the selection committee, tries to explain the committee’s “logic” here.

And here are some facts and figures about this year’s tournament.

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Now that the NFL has locked out the players and the players have filed a lawsuit that makes us have to remember the Sherman Antitrust Act from high school history class, we’re left to wonder how much a prolonged work stoppage will impact the Browns.

ESPN’s James Walker believes the Browns will be one of the most affected teams:

Cleveland has a rookie head coach (Pat Shurmur) and a young quarterback (Colt McCoy) and will switch systems on offense and defense.

Cleveland hasn’t run a 4-3 defense since 2004. The team also has to make alterations in personnel to fit the scheme. With free agency delayed, the draft becomes even more important for the Browns to fix weaknesses, particularly on the defensive line.

A West Coast offense is all about timing, and McCoy will not get the usual amount of offseason preparation to learn the new playbook and work with his coaches and teammates. Whenever a new collective bargaining agreement is reached, Cleveland needs to make up for lost time ASAP.

Just another day in Cleveland sports paradise.

So instead of reading about mini-camps and OTAs, get ready for a bunch of stories like this one.