Conference Tournaments Screw Worthy Teams Out Of March Madness, So Let's Fix Them

For at least a few minutes on Monday, college basketball was focused on the Horizon League. Top-seeded Valparaiso was facing Green Bay in the league's conference tournament. The latter school hadn't been to the NCAA Tournament since 1996. It was a perfect, made-for-television storyline, and since the Horizon is rarely on national TV, the league was thrilled.

Better still, the game itself went to overtime on a wild full-court pass. Eventually, underdog Green Bay pulled the upset, then won their next game to advance to the NCAA Tournament. Fun game, major upset, national exposure for a small conference: that's what March is all about.

Except, why did we play the previous 30 games?

That's what Valparaiso has to be asking. The Crusaders have impressive wins over Oregon State, Iona and Rhode Island this season, and they nearly knocked off Oregon. They won the Horizon League by three games and are currently ranked No. 38 nationally by KenPom.com—just one spot behind Notre Dame, and ahead of bubble teams like Syracuse, Michigan and Pitt.

Only now, due to dumb metrics and a single conference tournament loss, Valparaiso faces an uphill climb on Selection Sunday.

As is the case in every conference except the Ivy League, the winner of the postseason tournament gets an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament. It typically doesn't matter in the major conferences, given that many teams receive at-large bids. But in smaller conferences like the Horizon, very good teams can see their NCAA hopes vanish with a single upset. And that hardly seems fair.

An 18-game conference season is inarguably the best way to determine the best team in a conference. By contrast, a single-elimination conference tournament is far less likely to determine the actual best team: a sample size of 1-4 games is far more likely to produce fluke results. However, in order to capitalize on the added television exposure and money that comes with staging winner-take-all postseason tournaments, leagues are more than happy to give their NCAA autobids to their conference tournament winners.

The result? Look at this year's numbers: the top-seeded team has only won one of the 11 conference tournaments that have finished so far, and the No. 1 seed already has been eliminated from another. That means very good mid-majors including Wichita State, Valparaiso, St. Mary's, and Monmouth are sweating out Selection Sunday, while far less deserving teams are in the NCAA Tournament. It also means there's the potential for fewer big upsets in the tournament itself, given that solid teams are being replaced by less solid upstarts.

Look, conference tournaments are not going away. They generate too much money. Moreover, there's no point in holding a conference tournament that doesn't have an NCAA Tournament bid on the line. Who would watch that? We can't end them. But maybe we can mend the format as it pertains to perennial one-bid leagues.

What are some potential changes?

●A plus-one type system, in which the conference tournament is single elimination for everyone except the regular season champ. The regular season champ would have to lose twice to relinquish its NCAA Tournament spot.

●A single elimination tournament for everyone but the regular season champ, followed by the regular season champ playing the tournament champ in a best two-out-of-three series.

●A best two-out-of-three series between the top two regular season teams.

All of these are unorthodox tournament setups, but they're also a lot more fair than the current system. If adopted, they might end up being more lucrative for the conferences, too. After all, the first two formats mean more televised games, which in turn means more money. Moreover, if the best team from the conference advances in the NCAA Tournament, that means the conference as a whole has more chances to pocket cash as its representative gets more payouts and national exposure.

There are ways to keep conference tournaments fun, but also make it far less likely for deserving schools like Valparaiso from getting screwed on Selection Sunday. It just requires creativity, and a willingness to tweak an already awesome time of the year.