Obviously some people think it's pretty important if they believe getting selected on Sunday prior to getting destroyed on the next Thursday is a better accomplishment than winning the NIT.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

"It's important" is such a far cry from "best sports day of the year" that I don't even know why you would confuse the point you're trying to make by stating it like that.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Because BRick and I had a conversation about some people calling it that.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Oh. Ok.

_________________
Fare you well, fare you well
I love you more than words can tell
Listen to the river sing sweet songs
To rock my soul

Just as I don't think it should be a big deal that we tell the Southern Utahs of the world "sorry, you didn't win your conference tournament...you had your shot, now go home/play in the NIT).

As for the second part, cutting back the regular season a week (so let's say 1 home game and 1 road game) so you can send everyone somewhere halfway across the country for a week is still a net loss as far as time away from the classroom goes.

The Southern Utahs aren't really the question. But if putting them in solves the mistake of taking Iowa instead of SMU, I'd suggest it's worth an extra game or two.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Stop picking Iowa as the target of your ire...it's already been said multiple times that they weren't the last team in the tournament (it was NC State)...I know they are from the Big Ten and you've been on this kick that Illinois is one of the better teams in the conference RIGHT NOW so I'm sure you can't help yourself but Iowa didn't keep anyone out of the tournament that deserved to be there. There were plenty of spots to go around for bubble teams with a good resume (note here that SMU had 4 wins over RPI Top 100 teams)

I'll pick whoever I want as an example. if you prefer to use NC State, feel free to do so. The point is, we can eliminate all politics and subjective opinion with two more games.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Eliminate all politics?!?!

Who's seeding the teams? Who's filling out the bracket?

Always always always make the NCAAB tournament your goal. No cares or should about the NIT.

_________________
There are only two examples of infinity: The universe and human stupidity and I'm not sure about the universe.

Screw you guys.

Of course, there will always be people that complain about something, but you have to beat good teams to win. I don't really think beefing about seeding is quite the same as the legitimate beef that some teams have about being left out each year. You seem to be saying that since it can't be perfect, we shouldn't bother to even try to get the best teams in.

Again, it's two more games. Whining about the travel and hardship that it causes for "student"-athletes is really disingenuous when you have conferences forming based on TV markets rather than regions.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

That's not even remotely close to what I'm saying. We're talking about teams with marginal resumes here. The best teams are already in the tournament.

Just because a few teams who couldn't be bothered to put together a non conference schedule that didn't look like that of an Iowa community college and subsequently didn't win their conference tournament were left out doesn't mean we should pay them any mind when they piss and moan about being left out of an already overpopulated tournament pool.

Then why not go the other way and make winning a conference mandatory for entry into the Tournament?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Because people like you would bitch about Illinois being better than 90% of the field?

This has nothing to do with Illinois. I certainly don't think Illinois should have been in the Tournament under the existing paradigm. I do, however, believe that Illinois and at least several other teams that did not make it would have given a better account of themselves than some that did. Of course, automatic bids have something to do with that, but the top teams in the smaller conferences are showing that they're often pretty damn good. The problem is that losing to good teams doesn't necessarily make a team good.

The issue I have is that a lot of people seem to be saying that NC State had a more successful season than St. John's based on nothing more than an arbitrary selection by a committee. If that committee had instead chosen St. John's and left NC State out, suddenly the success of the two teams would have been different without one thing changing in their actual performance or play. I can't get on board with such a silly philosophy. I wouldn't think an objective SABRmetric guy like you would either.

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

I wasn't aware there were a lot of people debating whether St. John's or NC State had the better season. If there are, I don't think many people are saying the reason NC State is a better team/had a better season is because they made the tourney (if they are, they're dolts that no one should really be concerned with). The argument would be they had a better season up to that point, thus why they were selected over St. John's. (But again, we're talking about arguing over who was, what, the 34th or 35th best at large team in the nation? Who does that?!?!)

Oh, and I'm far from a SABRmetric guy ...just because I disagree with you on the value of a starting pitchers win/loss record doesn't mean I think you can create a metric to explain/predict everything in sports.

Fans of St. John's and NC State?

_________________
Anybody here seen my old friend Bobby?
Can you tell me where he's gone?
I thought I saw him walkin' up to The Hill
With Elon, Tulsi, and Don

Right...

...so like I said, no one we should really be concerned with.