Eyeball Test >>> RPI/SOS/etc, and here's why

[aphilso1]

The NCAA basketball tournament is NOT about crowning the most deserving team in college basketball; if the NCAA really wanted to make sure the best team won the national championship, the format would be totally different.  It would look much more like an 8-team double elimination tournament, rather than a 68 team single elimination tournament.  What we have instead is a competition designed for maximum entertainment value.  As such, when deciding between a more "deserving" bubble team and a "better" bubble team, the Committee should select the "better" team, i.e. the team that passes the eyeball test.

 

This is in stark contrast to the other money-maker sport, college football.  With only a 4-team playoff, the format lends itself toward crowning the team that has the best resume over the season's entirety.  College football produces merit-based champions, where the best team and most deserving team are often one and the same.  College basketball produces a weekend of chaos and maximum entertainment, which sometimes allows the most deserving team or best team to hang a banner (but more often does not).

 

So,  how does this tie back to Nebraska?  Clearly we are a team that is better than our resume, with talented play-makers all over the court.  By virtue of a schedule that saw the Huskers play most top opponents on the road, and allowed a couple deadbeat opponents to drag overall metrics down, and that was blitzkrieged by flopping into the loser's bracket of the holiday tourney, we are not one of the "most deserving" bubble teams.  But a bubble team's role isn't supposed to be to compete for a National Title, so why should that matter?  Rather, a bubble team's role is to cause chaos and provide entertainment.  This Nebraska team is tailor made to do just that.