"Top four remain - just shows how important getting a bye is!" I really don't like the BIg West Tournamnet format. It gives the top seeds too much of an advantage. Next year, I think we'll see the more traditional playoff with the top seed playing the bottom seed. etc. in the first round. Most likely it will bean 8 team tourney with the bottom two teams of the regular season disqualified.

The flip side is that winning the conference needs to mean something.

From a conference perspective, the Big West format does make a kind of sense for a perennial 1-bid conference. A conference wants their best team going to the Big Dance, since that team is probably the only one that might win a game or two...like UCSD almost did last year, only losing to #5 seed Michigan in the first round.

Winning 1 game is an extra $2 million for the conference.

A conference doesn't wanting a lower seed, like a 7 or 8, pulling an upset, and knocking out one of your top teams. Or worse, winning the whole conference tournament and then getting totally blown out in the first round.

I see your point, but I still think it isn't fair.

A mystery I'm reading has a good line when one of the characters says something isn't fair. The main character, an attorney, replies, "Fair is where they sell cotton candy".

Fairness is a central tenet of sports, if not law. It's also not well considered. This past season is a good illustration. Some teams get hot near the end, as Fullerton has done, and go on to do a lot better than their seeding would predict. Teams that could have been a top seed (e.g. UCD) suffer injuries but, if the injured return, could be a lot better than their seeding. Finally, the Big West seedings this year were based on tiebreakers and since the 3-7 seeds, were separated by only one game, the seedings were based on the outcomes of one game per team. In other words, seeding is not always a measure of the best teams.

First, I wasn't trying to be smart-ass. I just read that line last night, and liked it. So, apologies if it came across the wrong way.

A discussion of fairness in sports would be interesting. And probably a whole other topic I know that we, myself included, want to believe that 'fairness is a central tenet of sports', but I'm not sure that's accurate. Aren't upsets when an underdog defeats a team with "all the advantages"? Isn't that why we've loved Gonzaga? Boise State? Loyola of Chicago? They overcame the disadvantages, right?

If we acknowledge that some teams have a distinct advantage, like financial resources, facilities, etc, when it comes to obtaining/signing players and coaches - be it Alabama, USC, Ohio State or the Lakers (Showtime era), Yankees (1960's), 49ers (Eddie Debarolo era) or Patriots (Brady-Belichick era), how can we claim competing with them is fair - i.e a level playing field?

Doesn't NIL, by its nature, by and large do away with fairness? The whole discussion about NIL isn't about making it fair for all D1 schools, but making it manageable or at least marginally enforceable. It's been said in other thread on this site that the top 40 or so schools, don't want to share the pie.

Or prior to NIL, the booster networks at some schools that were already paying players under the table?

Even at the youth level, we hear about high schools recruiting players. About parents holding a chid back so that he/she is more mature for their grade level, and therefore have a competitive advantage. In youth soccer, it's an openly acknowledged fact that the better players (and/or their parents) gravitate toward the best teams...the good kids want to play with the other good kids. I've watched that happen on my granddaughter's club team, and listened to the conversations. Year after year, the top clubs field the strongest teams, while other clubs see their players move to those teams. None of that contributes to a level playing field.

What's fair or unfair, anyway? And who decides that? A UCD anecdote to illustrate: I remember watching the UCD men's basketball team win the D2 National Championship in 1998. During the telecast, the announcers repeatedly mentioned that Davis had an advantage - they didn't quite call it unfair, though it was obvious they meant it was - over ALL OTHER D2 schools because of the size of the school. They went so far as to say that UCD really needed to move to D1 because of school enrollment. Even though their opponent in that game, Kentucky Wesleyan, had already won 6 national championships, and had 16 D2 Final 4 appearances on its resume. UCD was in its 1st Final 4, but apparently had an unfair advantage.

Go figure.

Les likes to play small. Almost all our big guys leave unless they like to shoot threes. That is our entire game. Les' career was about being a sharpshooting 3 pointer and he seems to have a preference for that play. We do not penetrate low for easy 2 pointers often.

Tamba left for a much better team and is getting playing time. If we really aren't getting good talent, then who is to blame?

Yes, but I think that has to do with the level of Big West teams. I will be interested in seeing if his recruiting and strategic focuses now change. I still remember the Aggies Division 2 teams where we would be excited to get a player who was 6' 7".

No, I didn't think that you were trying to be smart-ass. You also have a good point about what happens at the organizational level that is driven by ca$h. As far as fairness within the game is considered, that was set with the original rules in each sport. No team has an unfair advantage in terms of both the rules within the game and the structure of the sport (distance from the foul line, height of the basket, etc.). It is only when some schools with resources can exploit those rules to take advantage of some of them (in basketball height, of course) to gain an unfair advantage that it becomes unfair as you point out. If no money or status was involved no school would need to exploit those rules in the same way. Pure athletic skill and coaching ability would determine the winners in an ideal world, which was the case in the early NCAA rules when teams like La Salle, UTEP and even Cal could win national titles.

Good response.

I think it really started to change at the college level when UCLA recruited Lew Alcindor, later Kareem. I remember hearing that Lucius Allen and Kenny Shackelford went to UCLA specifically to play with Kareem. Allen had all but committed to Kansas if I remember correctly. That started a parade of top players to the Bruins who attracted other top players.

At the same time, wealthy LA area businessman, Sam Gilbert, became heavily involved with the Bruin program. Wooden personally kept a distance, but the AD, and probably Wooden let Gilbert have lots of direct involvement with players, their families and influential friends.

I imagine other schools started to allow the same thing as far as boosters, if only to compete with UCLA. Not that it helped much. As John Madden said of Wooden, "He can take his and beat yours, then take yours and beat his." But after that, the "blue bloods" became even more dominant. I can only remember Marquette under Al McGuire and Georgetown under John Thompson being like La Salle and UTEP. Probably forgetting some.

Wow, we both go way back!

MWC had 12 teams this year, top 4 had a bye. Next year, I think it’s 10 teams do no tell what they’ll do.

How big do you think the step up will be to play in the MW next year?

if you look at the NET rankings of the new conference, we’re at 8 ( I think) ahead of San Jose and Air Force.