Mid Majors are what make the Tourney Great

I often get so sick of hearing the expert commentary weeks leading up to the tournament.  They project who they believe deserves to be in the tournament and who doesn’t.  ESPN, in order to push it’s agenda, often highlights only schools from power conferences and make excuses as to why mid majors don’t belong.  They often talk about how the mid majors are not deserving because they don’t have the strength of schedule, no quality wins, bad losses or records against the top 50.  They use whatever they can to push their agenda.

For instance, let’s take Drexel, a team from the Colonial that won 19 of its last 20 games.  Many “experts” said that Drexel didn’t have the strength of schedule and pointed to a bad loss to Norfolk State as a reason why Drexel did not belong in the dance.  Rewind back to yesterday and what happened?  Lowly Norfolk State pulls off an upset of Missouri, a number 2 seed.  So much for the theory of a bad loss.

I am a huge fan of VCU who made the amazing run to the Final 4 last year.  Despite what the Rams did last year, they also lacked the respect because they had bad losses.  Forget about the fact this is a team that lost 5 major contributors from last year and 60% of its offense.  Forget about the fact that there is only 1 senior, 2 juniors and a bunch of sophomores and freshman that make up the 9th youngest team in the nation.  Forget about the fact that this team found its identity pretty quickly after the first 5 games.  They were not deserving of a bid because they didn’t play anyone.  If ESPN would turn its bracket busters into a true bracket busters and match up power conference teams with mid majors, then things might be more fair.  Instead, they select the matchups they want and hurt many mid majors in the process.

The tournament every year brings so much excitement.  There is a reason why it is called March Madness.  It’s the huge upsets like Lehigh and Norfolk State that make the tournament great.  It’s the runs by teams like VCU and George Mason years ago that makes the tournament so exciting.  If anything, haven’t we learned by now that mid major programs with great records deserve a chance to be in the tournament before mediocre teams from power conferences?