I'm not wild about bashing the Big Ten (or any specific conference) because of their performance in the tournament. There but for the grace of God... But being given NINE bids was insane. If there's ever any year the Big Ten deserves derision, it was this year.
If you're going to create giant Mega Conferences like the Big Ten (14 teams), ACC (15 teams), and SEC (14 teams) where schools play 20-game conference schedules out of an allowed 27+MTE regular season schedule, what are Mid-Majors supposed to do? There are 76 schools in the P5+Big East, quite enough to eliminate every smaller conference auto bid and fill up all 68 NCAA slots. Which is what they would do if we let them. You can't create an incestuous protective bubble for P5+Big East teams and also wonder why/decry that Mid-Majors play anyone-- it's just nakedly disingenuous.
And so, two Big Ten teams with conference records of .500 and two Big Ten teams that were TWO GAMES BELOW .500 in conference got into the tournament (and none of them won the conference tournament). The SEC had one team with a .500 conference record (Missouri) get an at large. There were plenty of influential people-- some serious, some mostly entertaining but still influential-- calling for Kentucky (9-16) and Duke (13-11) to get bids, based entirely on reputation.
Here's an easy way for the committee to prevent this year's Big Ten debacle from happening again-- make a hard rule that no teams at .500 or below in their conference can get an at large (unless there's a tie for .500). With that as a rule, all of a sudden padding the Power conferences (which remember, is a term that really means "Basketball programs that became big from using football money") with more programs to quash Mid-Major auto bids has a serious downside....
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