34 At-large bids.

[panther2317]

How many to BCS leagues?
How many to "Mid-Majors"?
How many to "Low-Majors"?

Now....tell me that "mid-majors" are taking over the tournament.

[tcondon]

I'll classify things this way over the past 5 seasons.

Major conferences: 6 BCS conferences
Almost majors: Atlantic 10, Conference USA, Mountain West, MVC
The rest

2006: 26 BCS, 6 almost (Air Force, Bradley, George Washington, UNI, Wichita State, UAB) 2 from the rest (George Mason, Utah State)

2005: 25 BCS, 6 almost (Cincinnati, Charlotte, UNI, Southern Illinois, Utah, UAB) 3 from the rest (Nevada, Pacific, St. Mary's)

2004: 22 BCS, 9 almost (Air Force, BYU, Charlotte, Dayton, DePaul, Louisville, Memphis, RichmondSouthern Illinois, St. Joe's), 2 from the rest (UTEP, UAB)

2003: 24 BCS, 8 almost (BYU, Cincinnati, Marquette, Memphis, Southern Illinois, St. Joe's, Utah, Xavier), 2 from the rest (Gonzaga, Butler)

2002: 27 BCS, 5 almost (Wyoming, Utah, Southern Illinois, Marquette, Charlotte) 2 from the rest (Pepperdine, Tulsa

2001: 30 BCS, 4 almost (Creighton, BYU, St. Joe's, Xavier), 1 from the rest (Fresno State)

[panther2317]

If NCAA football can choose their championship game based only on rankings and computer #'s, why isn't the RPI the end all be all of the Selection Committee? I've always wondered that?

[AmesPanther]

If NCAA football can choose their championship game based only on rankings and computer #'s, why isn't the RPI the end all be all of the Selection Committee? I've always wondered that?

If you wanted to go that route then wouldn't you use rankings? Didn't all of the top 25 ranked teams get in? Do you honestly think MSU is the 21st best team in the country? The RPI isn't perfect so I'd call it one of many measurement tools, but the real problem is that it gets used when it favors the BCS schools and ignored when it favors the mid-majors.

[AmesPanther]

I was thinking about this more. If we go off the RPI then MSU is a 6th seed in the tourney.

[panther2317]

See Ames...I don't think it matters what I believe. If the numbers are true...then MSU IS the 21st best team in the country.

I think there were teams ranked all year long in the AP/ESPN Polls that shouldn't have been...Louisville for example had to lose 6 straight games to be ejected from the rankings. Rankings are subjective. The RPI is an OBJECTIVE way to judge the relative strenght of a team (or conference) over the period of an entire season. Playing by the NCAA's rules...MSU was the 21st best team.

[AmesPanther]

The problem is MSU isn't the 21st best team in the country so the RPI is just as wrong as the subjective rankings. The rankings usually do start off wrong but get things straight by the end.

The NCAA's rules are not that the RPI is the selection criteria. They have made it more than clear that the last 10 games were a huge factor, injuries, out of conference games, and the RPI.

I guess we will find out soon enough how the MVC stacks up...

[panther2317]

What makes you think that MSU isn't the 21st best team in the country? After the top 15...I pretty much believe that 16-100 are pretty even. That's why they need the RPI. To judge what a team does on the court, who they play, where they play them and to look at the #'s objectively.

It our biases that won't let us believe that MSU isn't the 21st best team in the country. That means you don't think UNI is #25 either then...or WSU 29, Creighton 39?

[HoyaAG]

If NCAA football can choose their championship game based only on rankings and computer #'s, why isn't the RPI the end all be all of the Selection Committee? I've always wondered that?

Because the RPI is a horrible, throwaway stat?

I'd be all for using Sagarin, or Pomeroy, or Pomeroy's Pythagorean statistic, because they are designed and evaluated by picking winners. The best would probably be a mix of ranking systems.

But RPI is not a predictive stat, and wasn't meant to be one. It's a political stat meant encourage harder scheduling. A better RPI doesn't mean a better team, and the people who made the RPI didn't mean for that to be true.

It was very astute of the MVC to schedule to the RPI. But you also should have listened when the committee repeatedly said that the RPI is a blunt tool and only a small part of the evaluation.

[AmesPanther]

MSU is way too high. CU is a little high. UNI is probably 5 too high.

[Newsbreaker]

First, I don't agree that RPI matters for the BCS, but is ignored for the rest of us. Our RPI probably played a VERY large role in our getting in. In MSU's case, they looked at the RPI, then looked at what they did to get that RPI, and realized in their case the numbers didn't jive. No number in the world could tell the committee what they found out by looking at MSU...a team that played NOBODY in the OOC schedule, and won a few key games in a good leauge, then lost very early in the conference tournament.

MSU is not, was not, a tournament team.

In our case, they look at who we played, the fact that we were not afraid to go on the road to LSU, and the games we won, saw the high RPI and it all added up to a tournament team.

The problem with any 'number' system is that it's created by humans, and will always have significant flaws. I can take a TV or Radio ratings book and make it say whatever I want it to say, and I'm not even constructing the formula. When you just start throwing variables into a pot, you can make that number say almost anything you want.

What you can't do is make it tell you definitively whom is better then whom. What you can't do is predict what chaos will insue on a basketball court.

If you could, there would be no reason to play the games.

[tcondon]

Missouri State did go to Fayetteville to play Arkansas, along with road games at Arkansas State and Oral Roberts. Throw in a win @ Wisconsin Milwaukee and you have a pretty nice nonconference schedule.

[Newsbreaker]

Arkansas State is marginal at best, as is Oral Roberts, not exactly someone who you'd think is 'equal or better' to the average MVC team. UW-Milwaukee is really their best win, out of league play.

I'm one who gives credit to a team who schedules a big opponent, but due to no fault of their own, that big team ends up being below average. If Iowa (more like when) stinks next year and we beat them, it's not our fault we scheduled someone who normally is above average, but turned out not to be.

Take our game at ISU as a 'for instance.' Nobody knew at gametime even that ISU would be downright bad. We went to play a team on the road everyone would've normally expected to be quite good. We get credit for that, even if they didn't hold up their reputation.

Arkansas is usually a fairly average team in the past several years. There is no reasonable expectation on MSU's part that they're going to play a very very good, NCAA lock type team. Hence, the game carries much less weight. It would be the equivalent of going to play Minnesota. Most likely they're not going to be outstanding, so it's not the same thing as playing an LSU or even an Iowa.

[GonzoCat]

Yes the RPI was adjusted to encourage teams to play games on the road, but if the RPI is then not used in the selection it doesn't encourage anything. I agree MSU is not the 21st best team in the land, but they played a tougher noncon schedule than most of the BCS teams and certainly far more road games. The result was they ended up with a high RPI, but instead the committee took teams with a much worse RPI and also worse noncon SOS, etc. So while they say the RPI was adjusted to encourage more difficult scheduling, they just forgot about it in the end.

One of the most absurd comments coming out of all this is that the MVC teams scheduled to the RPI or figured out how to manipulate the system. MVC teams scheduled tough noncon games on the road, period.

I don't know what the NIT pays now that the NCAA is running it, but if I was MSU I would have told the NCAA to stick their NIT invite where the sun don't shine.

[Newsbreaker]

It's not that RPI wasn't used in selection (again I say it probably was a HUGE factor in our inclusion), but rather that it wasn't the ONLY criteria. While their RPI was more then sufficient, in MSU's case their resume was lacking in other places, hence they're playing in the NIT.

It is incorrect to equate the RPI with being a single, weighted factor with it being either unimportant or totally important.