(Bank)Roll Tide!

Alabama head baseball coach Brian Bohannon was fired Friday, May 4. The firing occurred, allegedly, because Bohannon had (once again, allegedly) been involved in the placing of some sizable wagers against his own team and on LSU, which was playing Alabama. I say "been involved in," using passive voice, because evidently he didn't make the wagers himself. To put this in a Cliff Notes context, Alabama has a really good baseball team, but LSU is a top five outfit and arguably as good as anyone.

The trick to his wager was that Bohannon switched starting pitchers before the game, plugging in an inferior pitcher. The pitcher originally scheduled to start had back tightness, a legitimate reason to be scratched, and was Alabama's ace. This meant that an LSU bettor would have, at worst, a really, really helpful and inappropriate line. At best, if the switching of the pitchers became public sufficiently before game time but after the wager was made, the bettor might possibly have an arbitrage opportunity by betting LSU early and Alabama late after the number had moved.

In the last 24 hours, more details have become public involving the person who placed the bet(s) for Bohannon. Evidently, Bohannon is no genius, as he contacted the person physically placing the bets by using his own phone, which is Alabama property. Duh and double duh.

The Fallout

So now everyone is wondering if all college sports are invisibly laced with similar plotlines and relationships. Well, Mormons aren't big on gambling (allegedly), so maybe BYU gets a pass, but the answer to the question is that it's certainly possible. And media covering this story, to my knowledge, haven't even touched on an easy, oblique way for underpaid college coaches, especially assistants, to profit from very, very gray machinations that are, basically, impossible to prevent.

I'll let readers ponder the possibilities and will open my June blogs with a paint-by-numbers explanation as to how college assistants could be making a few bucks from betting without directly wagering on teams. Stay tuned.

Bob Dietz

May 27, 2023

LIV and Super Bowl III

With Brooks Koepka capturing the 2023 PGA Championship at Oak Hill with a dominant tour de force, it's time for me to saddle my bragging horse and spout off. We handicappers like explaining how we were right  and others were wrong, so I'll get right to it.

Back in 2022, many loud-mouthed golf pundits tried to blister Koepka, DeChambeau, Dustin Johnson, and Mickelson with nonsensical bad-mouthing. American and international media were flooded with pro-PGA propagandists posing as moralists. The cacophony of LIV criticism (as Howard Cosell might have said) was outlandish, well beyond mean-spirited, and laden with declarative absurdities. 

I laid out my defense of both the LIV tour in general, and Brooks Koepka in particular, in a series of July articles. I recommend readers check out the 2022 series:  "The Saudi Golf Tour (Part One)" from July 3; July 4's "The Comedic Writings of Eamon Lynch," and my July 5 "The Saudi Golf Tour (Part Two)."

The bottom line is that hired hacks like Eamon Lynch were proven wrong, and wrong by a wide margin. When it came time for major championships, Koepka and Mickelson tied for second in the 2023 Masters, and three LIV golfers cracked the top nine at Oak Hill. There is no questioning the quality of LIV golf. And there should also be no questions regarding the decision-making of Koepka, DeChambeau, Cam Smith, Dustin Johnson, and Mickelson. Koepka and DeChambeau undoubtedly benefited from the LIV schedule and workload in coming back from their serious injuries. They were able to rehab at their own, optimal pace. They are back, and it would be difficult to find fault in the processes that brought them to this point.

Super Bowl III

Rory McIlroy seems to have put away his PGA pom poms and cheerleading outfit for the moment. As I said in 2022, who the hell is McIlroy to comment on who should be facing what kind of competition? Could you imagine rookie Joe Namath turning down a 400K AFL bonus because the NFL was presumed to have better players?

I won't lie. I rooted for Koepka down the stretch Sunday. He was pulling his own version of Super Bowl III, and he was magnificent. Frankly, during his second round, Koepka could easily have scored three or four strokes better than he did. He was right there on every hole. He dominated.

The question I have for the Eamon Lynch crowd is whether they actually believed the mendacious tripe they were writing? Or were they just defaming the LIVers to coddle favor with establishment golf institutions? Either way, Lynch and his ilk should publicly apologize. Not for being moral absolutists, but for being so goddamn wrong that they look silly. It's hard to be any more wrong than Lynch.

He'll learn, I suppose. There's nothing dumber than propagandists who make actual public predictions.

Bob Dietz

May 23, 2023

NBA Anomaly

I rarely bet the NBA. Maybe once a decade I take an NBA future, and these have worked out well, but unless I see something making me an offer I cannot refuse, I steer clear.

I do, however, scan the playoff box scores and such, and at the conclusion of the Monday, May 1st games, I realized that I was looking at a truly anomalous set of statistics, about as rare as death by reptile.

My discovery went something like this. The Sixers had upset the Celtics in Game One of their best-of-seven. I decided to glance through the numbers and see how a Philly team without Embiid had done it. The result itself hadn't been terribly surprising, as I felt any team with an X-factor like Harden has a shot in any given game. But these stats, they were truly something else.

The Numbers

First I looked at Boston's field goal percentage. They had lost; maybe they had an off night from the floor. I gagged. They had shot 58.7% from the field. Holy hell. Teams almost never lose shooting  58.7% from the floor, especially in playoff games. 

Next I thought, "Well, maybe they bricked some free throws or perhaps they just didn't shoot many." I halfway choked. The Celtics had shot 94.4%, making 17 of 18. The Sixers had shot just 12, making all of them.

Okay, so how did Boston lose? The next theory was that maybe Philly killed them on the boards. Nope. Boston outrebounded the Sixers by 10, 38 to 28. Yowza and double yowza.

I had never seen a team at any level, high school, college, or professional, pull off that statistical trifecta and lose a game. Boston shot almost 59% from the floor, 94.4% from the line while shooting more free throws, and had a plus-10 rebound margin. And lost. Unbelievable. I was looking at stats that may never be repeated by a losing NBA team again.

What Does It Mean?

Damned if I know. It's a massive statistical anomaly. When the Allegheny, the Monongahela, and Ohio Rivers join, this kind of statistical confluence should result in a one-sided win for Boston. Amazing.

As to what happens next (and Game Two is in progress as I write this), well, if Boston puts up numbers like that every game, they should win every game. With Embiid returning and Harden still an X-Man, however, I can't bet on it. Or maybe I can.

All I know for certain is that I will likely never again see stats like that conjoined with a result like that in my lifetime. It's always good to recognize a white crow when you see one.

Bob Dietz

May 3, 2023

Ninety-Six Frugal Hours: Homage to Jean Scott

I've followed Jean Scott, she of the Las Vegas Advisor's "Frugal Gambler" blog, since she first began writing. Back in the 80's and early 90's, while staying in Las Vegas 90 days a year each football season, Ms. Scott's tips and coaching helped me survive on very tight budgets.

These days, I do most of my Las Vegas football scouting, checking futures odds and evaluating available contests, during an annual July trip lasting just a week or so. In the past, most books have held off on college football futures odds and finalizing contests until July. But with sports wagering now legal in many states, some Las Vegas books are posting futures odds earlier so as to beat states to the punch. There is, after all, only so much money (in theory) to be committed by the public to football futures. Thus, in 2023, I decided to head west in April. An April excursion, it turned out, offered the opportunity to exercise some long out-of-shape frugality muscles. As I designed the trip, I realized that April offered some opportunities to, ahem, be cheap that weren't likely to be available in July. Emulating Ms. Scott while also emulating the frugal me of my youth, it turned out, were admirable goals, but easier said than done. I managed to channel her frugal essence in some instances but failed badly in others.

Flight and Hotels

The flight itself was a jackpot of frugality. I had never taken any flight to Las Vegas for just 15,000 air miles, much less a flight from the relatively small TRI (Tri-Cities) airport. But I was able to procure such a flight, and my outgoing went through DFW, which I prefer.

I have, however, lost some of the oomph of my youth, and my flights turned out to be a bit more of a physical challenge than expected. The outgoing flight required a dash through DFW and a late-night arrival in Las Vegas. The return flight required a pure red eye to Charlotte with a four-hour layover, and those E terminal connections in Charlotte rarely go without a hitch. That 15,000-mile frugality came with a physical cost. 

My hotel choices featured a night at the Horseshoe (the strip casino formerly known as Bally's), a couple of nights at the Four Queens, and a night at the Tuscany. I waited to book the Horseshoe until I knew I would make my DFW connection, therefore I got a good rate, but not the best. My late arrival, however, led Horseshoe to upgrade my room. Very much appreciated. I try to support the Four Queens since it's one of few Las Vegas hotels that doesn't tack on a "resort fee." Four Queens was fine. My final night featured a Hotels.com booking at the Tuscany, one of my favorite places. Combined with my first night at the Horseshoe, I added two notches to my Hotels.com stash enroute to a free room (10 notches). 

The Gambling

I did almost no actual gambling this trip. I scouted numbers, reviewed limits at various sports books, and verified that ownership/brand changes had not yet affected the aegis of on-site books at the Horseshoe and Mirage. I also verified that South Point no longer had satellite books downtown. My other responsibility was to pin down a schedule for a documentary filmmaker friend who'll be visiting Las Vegas in July. He needs a structured short list of mob highlights and locales. 

In terms of table and machine play, I used a couple of Las Vegas Advisor coupons to massage me through maybe two hours of video poker play with a net loss of, ta daa, $34.

Recreation and Food

I used an LVA  coupon to knock four dollars off my Mob Museum admission. The museum is impressive, and one can spend a full day there if invested in the subject. I had intended to spend at least half a day at Area 15, but between horrendous traffic and the fact that I had a vehicle rented for just 48 of my 96 hours, I decided to save Area 15 for a longer trip.

My opinion of the South Point buffet matches its LVA ranking. In a world where the charm and value of old-style LV buffets have almost disappeared, the South Point buffet has created a time capsule of quality and price. I must also give a thumbs up to happy hour at Oscar's, which featured very reasonable prices in a very attractive setting. In addition, while at the Four Queens, I had my usual bang-up breakfast at Magnolia's.

Of course, I also availed myself of the classic off-menu Ellis Island $9.99 steak special, right around the corner from the Tuscany. You no longer have a beer included, so I shelled out four bucks for an iced tea, but it was still a retro meal deal in a nice room with great service. I was flanked by two couples also enjoying that special.

The Car Rental

In keeping with the frugal spirit, I plugged into the lowest price two-day rental on Priceline, which required picking up and dropping off at Treasure Island. Well, as I waited in line to pick up at the Dollar kiosk hidden away on the second floor, I eavesdropped on customer after customer being told that the only vehicles available for their reservations were electric, and none had a full charge because Dollar did not have a working charging station. The most-charged car was at 57%.

Fortunately, my reservation had been made sufficiently in advance (and paid for in advance) that they had saved me an actual gasoline vehicle. My renting a car, however, turned out to be a royal pain. 

Las Vegas is redesigning and repaving the strip in preparation for a November Formula One race, which is evidently a bigger and more profitable deal than hosting a Super Bowl. Las Vegas Boulevard was therefore one lane in each direction from Paris to the Stratosphere, and the roads to the west of the strip were a labyrinth of cones and detours. Just a mess, and it doesn't figure to improve anytime soon. Had I attempted night-driving west of the strip, it would have been a complete horror. It was the worst non-holiday traffic I have seen in Las Vegas in 45 years. 

Blowing Taps on Frugality?

Every frugal day has its downside. The absence of certain frugal Gibraltars has had its effects on me. I had never fully recovered from the closing of the classic buffet/coffee shop at the Fremont Casino, and I was suddenly, surprisingly confronted with no Fremont Casino Lanai Express, my hangout for dollar shrimp cocktails and good soft ice cream. First no Golden Gate shrimp cocktails; now no Lanai Express. Very disturbing. It crushes my frugal spirit. 

I'll no longer shop for inexpensive car rentals since driving is such a major mess. If I need to check South Point or M, I'll do an on-site-wherever-I-am rental for 24 hours, regardless of cost, and live with it.

And as usually happens on flights through Charlotte (my return), my E-terminal flight was delayed a couple hours. There's nothing like plopping down in a freezing airport at 5 AM after a red eye and realizing (1) you're going to be there longer than expected and (2) there are three flights all delayed and scheduled out of the same little gate at the same time, so nobody knows nothin' about when you might actually get out of there. That 15,000 air-miles round trip came with a cost, as I said earlier. I won't be doing red eyes through Charlotte again. I'm just too damned old.

A Final Homage

Ms. Scott always kept a cheerful disposition in her writings, regardless of outcome or hassles. I try to do the same, but I'm not nearly as disciplined. 

I'm glad there's still an Ellis Island steak special (sans beer) and a South Point buffet and some classy happy hours. But I mourn the Lanai Express and the old bakery shop in Caesars' Palace, and I miss the overpriced but quality buffets at Paris and Harrah's and Planet Hollywood. I even miss the birds outside the old Flamingo buffet. I wonder how the hell anyone taking the strip busses can possibly get anywhere with one-lane traffic in both directions and pedestrians still crossing the strip. 

Las Vegas has always felt like home to me, a place where wits and judgement and frugality combined to present opportunities. In April, however, Las Vegas seemed more like a grotesque tourist trap, offering little in the way of playable video poker or slot clubs with meaningful benefits.

Perhaps my tone has been skewed by my sampling a $13 pastry called a "Feather" (glorified banana bread), featured where my favorite Caesars' Palace coffee shop has been replaced by a more bourgeoisie pastry counter. Or maybe that return red eye drained my 65-year-old positivity a bit. We'll see how dampened I am soon enough, as I'm scheduled to return to Las Vegas in July.

Until then, perhaps it's true that we cannot go home again. But just in case, someone please ask Jean Scott to save a chunk of Ellis Island steak for me. And tell her to lay off the Feathers. They're bad for the wallet, and bad for the frugal soul.

Bob Dietz

April 30, 2023

Dungeons and Drag Queens

On March 31, the eve of House Bill 9 banning Tennessee drag queens from performing in front of sub-18-year-olds, I attended a drag show initially scheduled for the student center at East Tennessee State University. The venue was changed 72 hours before the show as ETSU, in its usual conservative-pandering gutlessness, moved the performances to the Millennium Center across the street. The reason given was some non-legal mishmash regarding wanting to follow the spirit of the law before it became law. When the implementation of the law was delayed by a judge's order hours before it was to take effect, ETSU was predictably left with uber conservative egg all over its administrative face.

Can you imagine being forced to share a foxhole with the ETSU administration? Gumby has more backbone.

I'm not particularly big on drag shows, having attended just six or seven in my 65 years, but I'm a free speech advocate, so I was there. To me, the drag queens' arguments were obvious and persuasive. How can a state legislate that one subset of people dressing a certain way and performing dance routines is legal (say, ETSU cheerleaders) and another subset of people similarly dressed and performing the same routines is illegal? 

In other words, how can behaviors be deemed illegal based solely on gender? How can a state legislate differential treatment under a law? It's a hypocritical, self-contradictory can of worms. 

What Do I Know?

What do I know about the effects of drag performances on the minds of those under 18 years of age? I know nothing. It's not a research subject I've ever explored, much less kept current regarding. I have zero idea of the behavioral consequences of seeing one, two, or five thousand drag shows. I have no real opinion of what those effects might be on 15-year-olds, 10-year-olds, or five-year-olds. But I also have no idea what the effects of watching cheerleading championships or online porn have on those same age brackets. I guess life is one big mystery to me since I don't have the clairvoyant powers of the Tennessee state legislature.

What I do know is that you can't say that a man dancing a certain way and dressing a certain way is guilty of a felony and a woman behaving identically is not. One would think that even (and maybe especially) the hardest right-leaning incels would back the drag queens based solely on men's rights.

Keeping Letters Separate

What surprised me about the event was the dichotomous forced-choice message being promulgated by both the event's speakers and the "you're going to hell" protestors outside.

The Tennessee legislature had also passed a bill preventing "gender affirming" medical treatments for young people. In other words, transsexuals would have to wait until they are adults to commit to medically changing genders. Personally, I have no qualms with this. Get a little living under your belt before deciding which gender you want to inhabit for another 50 years. Evidently, however, based on the crowd's reaction to various speakers, I'm one of the few drag queen proponents to feel this way.

All of the gender letters seem to be glommed together as some kind of distressed super-minority. None of the speakers, including presidential candidate Marianne Williamson, separated the drag queen debate from the underage pick-a-gender debate. Logically, I find this bizarre. The topics could not be more different except for the fact that not many people imbibe of drag queening or medical gender change. 

White Dolemite

If you ever run into me while I'm wearing a maroon brocade suit and matching sequined shoes, look closely at my lapel. There'll be a name tag reading "White Dolemite."

I'm a big fan of Eddie Murphy's film My Name is Dolemite. I saw the original Rudy Ray Moore Dolemite movies when I was an undergrad at Penn State. In Murphy's biographical homage to Moore, he explains in one scene that he's not really a pimp. He's playing a character, a very carefully designed and detailed character. Such is the case for the drag queens in the Millennium Center show. They're promoting planned, practiced performance art. They are demonstrating an art form. They're playing characters. What the drag queens are experiencing can be described as the polar opposite of what underage transsexuals are experiencing.

Whereas the queens are performing well rehearsed characters and know precisely what they're doing on stage, underage transsexuals argue that they are being pressured to perform off stage in a gender that doesn't suit them. That they are being forced, moment to moment, to live inauthentically. 

From a locus of control perspective, the dichotomy is clear. The drag queens are imposing their characters on the outside world. The underage transsexuals see the outside world as imposing on them and trying to define them. Really, these two disparate groups have little logical reason to be politically joined at the hip. One contributing factor creating this kind of odd team-up is the moral/legal certitude (some might say fascism) of legislatures such as Tennessee's. Criminalizing folks does tend to provide some common political ground.

Drag Queens in Dungeons?

When GOP legislators in these states that are as RED as my initials try to justify their extreme moral authoritarianism, they usually muck things up as they did with the drag queen legislation. For example, somebody found a YouTube video of a queen lap dancing a 10-year-old. Doesn't matter if it's one queen out of a thousand. Doesn't matter if it happened years ago. Doesn't matter if there are 5,000 drag queen YouTube videos and it's the only inappropriate one. The offending video becomes the raison d'etre for banning drag performances in front of minors.

Being a gambler, I recoil at the ramifications of this misuse of evidence. If the GOPers were consistent in their intent and morality, every minor would be banned from stepping foot in a Catholic church, given the proven pedophiliac propensities in the Church's past. That, however, hasn't made it into a House Bill 10.

The drag queen components of House Bill 9 propose that drag performances in the presence of minors are a misdemeanor at first conviction and thereafter a felony. I'd like to suggest that readers look up Tom Holland's performance of Rihanna's "Umbrella" on Lip Synch Battle. Holland was performing for all ages, so he was guilty of at least a misdemeanor (in Tennessee), given his pelvic thrusts while dressed in drag. Not only that, if he had previously rehearsed in front of fans, he would be guilty of a felony since he performed more than once. He'd be headed to a dungeon for draggin'.

And finally, a warning for the political creatures who think a collection of letters sewn together as a political force must be a good thing. The problem with this theory is that you never really know if hindsight will render one or more of the letters as an irrefutably bad path for most people. When you sew everything together, one defective part can leave you helming a patchwork PAC, not capable of saying much that's specific, stumbling into unintended consequences. 

Just ask Victor Frankenstein.

Bob Dietz

April 14, 2023

March Madness Meta

March Madness is, as Marx or Hemingway might write, an opium of the people. Something to distract from the sea of manipulative corporate control in which we find ourselves immersed. March Madness is one of a handful of iconic American sporting events that function as a kind of scuba gear whose foul air somehow generates the hallucination of clean breathing.

March Madness has grown over decades into one of the major gambling foci of the American sports year. And while gambling, as Hemingway added, was "an opium of the people if there ever was one," gambling is only tangentially related to today's entry.

The elements and foibles that have led March Madness to its prominent spot on the American stage are worth mentioning. My observations are banal and obvious, but that doesn't render them untrue. The culture of March Madness can, from an Orwellian perspective, be quite unsettling.

What is March Madness About?

Well, first of all, months and months of the college basketball regular season feature continual speculation regarding where teams should be placed, if at all, in the post-season tournament, and who should be ranked where based on what. It's all very erudite in an intense obsessive kind of way, but the only reason such speculation exists is because the 350 teams reside in compartmentalized leagues with very little interaction between the disparate conferences. All of the pseudo-academic debate takes place in a context that assumes teams with designated 5-Star athletes are better than teams with designated 3-Star athletes. Other assumptions include the idea that teams paying their coaches more are intrinsically better than teams paying their coaches less, that teams playing in buildings that seat more people are superior to teams playing in buildings with fewer seats, and that teams on television regularly are better than teams that are not.

These are fascinating assumptions, fascinating in the sense that there is no reason for any of them to necessarily be very true. And if they are a bit true, the confidence and degree to which they are true may be wildly exaggerated. 

Basketball teams, as I and the movie Hoosiers argue ad nauseum, are organisms. They are not collections of individuals, 5-Star or otherwise. If we are at the point where the smallest team in Division 1 knocks off a one seed, and where alleged blue blood collections of 5-Stars in Kentucky, Kansas, and Duke are routinely shown an early exit despite all the advantages of their seeds, then what is the point of presumptive seeds at all other than to protect television ratings and to promote players/coaches/teams who have been promoted in the past?

All of these assumptions, presumptions, and overt legacy-team rigging contribute to the opposite of what sport is supposed to be. It's something akin to Soviet skater-judging in events held in the Soviet Union. If you stay upright, legacy carries you a long way.

The Meta(s) of March

Does any of this ring a bell?

People compartmentalized into disparate populations based on income of parents, the size of the home in which one lives, the notoriety and accomplishments of immediate relatives. Also, compartmentalized possibilities for income based on social exposure, being ranked by others, and evaluating people as individuals while ignoring how they have functioned and accomplished with unrelated others. 

It's obvious meta with the culture at large, of course, this March Madness stuff. Personally, I think it's got quite the resonance.

Another lesson to be learned from March Madness is the old theme of acquiescence to designated authority. Talking heads on every network "debate" the quality of teams without debating the quality of the debate process. Then everyone bows their heads, shuts their eyes and minds, and obsequiously waits for the white smoke from the Committee Conclave. A bunch of guys, mostly white, deciding that Purdue (with the team speed of a glacier) should be a one seed, Memphis (who damn near beat one seed Houston two out of three) is an eight, and Florida Atlantic (with 30 wins) is a nine. And those two 28+-win squads from FAU's league -- well, we've run out of white smoke.

Acquiescence to white guy conclaves. Capitalistic self interest (FAU didn't NOT accept a spot because their brethren got shafted). More capitalistic self interest (Memphis and FAU, playing each other after getting hosed, could have refused to play each other). Bow to the conclave. Cash your checks gladly. March Madness has considerable resonance with a corporate, authoritarian real world with more pseudo-expertise than actual.

Opportunity Versus Probability

If I had to choose the worst cultural Meta of March Madness, I think it might be the presentation of "an opportunity" as the equivalent of "a fair and equal opportunity." 

The NCAA Tournament Committee has been running simulations with various seeding scenarios forever. For years, they've been able to tell which slottings have what effects on teams' chances of advancing or winning. It's a kind of backwards engineering. Design the experiment to get the results needed. Sort of like student loans being approved based on zip codes, if I may stretch the resonance a bit.

There is an enormous sleight of mind being fed to American sports fans when simple inclusion in the tournament implies that a team has gotten fair and equitable treatment, and that inclusion in the tournament means that the overseers can now wash their hands since anyone in the tournament "has a chance." Like Jim Carrey's Lloyd in Dumb and Dumber being thrilled since there is "a chance."

This selling of "an opportunity" as "a fair opportunity" is the raison d'etre of American sports in general. The poor have a chance to become rich. What more could they ask? It's such an innumerate argument, waving empty canteens at a cultural desert full of people with the promise that one in a thousand canteens contains actual water. It's The Hunger Games in a TV-friendly format.

Conclusion

One of the great lines of March Madness television is the one about "They pass the eye test." As if everyone has the same set of eyes. More ominous is the implication that, regardless of our eye differences, we should all be seeing the same things anyway. 

When the essence of sport, the ritual of a level-playing-field competition, is co-opted and manipulated by conclaves with all of the power, it's time to recognize how corrupt and anti-sport the process has become. March Madness, unfortunately, has evolved into a homunculus of all the worst aspects of American culture as a whole. 

Bob Dietz

March 31, 2023

Smoking the Seeds: 2023

I've spent years debunking the Rube Goldberg machinations of the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee. Season after season, the members of said committee have been screwing non-brand-name teams by imposing bad seedings and manipulating bracket design in service of writing checks to the major conferences. Teams' Q-Ratings and potential overall television ratings seem to have been the committee's guiding lights.

Once upon a time, back in the era when RPI was the committee's dominant tool (and Missouri State, with a low-30's RPI, got royally hosed), the committee at least tried to be semi-subtle about it. As the years have passed, however, the committee has become about as subtle as a Trump rally -- white, loud, and indifferent to history or reason. They've massaged every major conference wannabe winner into the tournament while designing gauntlets to squeeze the pesky low-Q teams out ASAP.

The Toughest Region

As most seasons unfold, I usually invest between 4K and 5K on assorted long shots, half of which are generally of the non-brand-name variety. This year I invested just dinner money on a couple of teams. When I saw the East bracket, I was glad I had just dinner money on the line. Literally half the teams I considered were in the East region. My initial reaction to the East was that it was arguably the toughest region of all time. 

The East had two hugely underrated sleepers in Florida Atlantic and Oral Roberts. I thought there were three or four teams in the East better than Purdue. Charles Barkley predicted that Memphis would handle Purdue in the second round. So did I. The problem was Memphis first had to face the nine-seeded, 30-win FAU Owls, whose three losses had all been on the road. Why FAU was a nine, I couldn't tell you. Why Memphis was an eight, I couldn't tell you, either. Memphis had hammered Houston in the AAC final and had almost beaten them a second time. Houston was a one seed; why was Memphis given no respect?

The East also had Kentucky, Tennessee, and Duke, all potential Final Four teams. Plus a tourney-scary Michigan State. And I'm not even mentioning the one through three seeds (Purdue, Marquette, and Kansas State). 

What sins did these teams commit to all be jammed into this bracket from hell?

Shoehorns and Exclusions

The usual collection of Big 10 teams was shoehorned into the tournament. Teams that were frozen out included Liberty, a couple of AAC squads in Tulane and Cincinnati, and two teams from Conference USA, North Texas and UAB. 

My arguments for these teams go something like this:  Kennesaw State had three-seed Xavier on the ropes in their tournament game until a late no-call turned the tide. Liberty was comparable to Kennesaw. If Houston was all that, then the AAC should have been assigned more teams. Tulane and Cincinnati had similar records to those shoehorned Big 10 squads. Given the Big 10's questionable showing in the tournament, it's not a reach to suggest that Tulane and Cincinnati deserved serious consideration. And finally, given FAU's run, it's also not a stretch to conclude that 29-7 North Texas and 28-9 UAB should have been invited. 

The shoehorning of Big 10 teams is, as I said, an annual abuse.

Clearing the Smoke

The conference tournaments prove nothing and extend an already too-lengthy college season. Key injuries occurred in a handful of conference tournaments; Kentucky, UCLA, and Houston were all the worse for it. Players either aggravated existing injuries by trying to play or suffered injuries during the conference tournaments themselves. These conference tourneys cost the blue bloods this year. 

The tourneys exist primarily to pad brand-name conference coffers, so it's fitting that blue blood greed led, in the long haul, to fewer NCAA tourney checks for those blue bloods.

Basketball teams are organisms, not collections of individuals. The brand names suffered mightily as injuries mounted and fragile chemistries affected by those injuries melted down in the cauldron of one-and-done. What surprised me most was that some experienced off brand teams that figured to be good but not overwhelming, such as Creighton and San Diego State, handled squads with more firepower. 

Conclusion 

Going forward, all we can hope is that the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee will make note of their errors, admit their malfeasance, and swear off their unfair seedings. Yes, perhaps the next time three Conference USA teams win 28 games or more, the committee will consider taking more than one of them. And maybe consider giving one of them a seed higher than nine.

But -- LOL -- let's not hold our breath waiting.

Bob Dietz

March 28, 2023