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Mock NCAA selection show...

Discussion in 'Sports and News' started by The Backyardigan, Feb 7, 2007.

  1. Bubbler

    Bubbler Well-Known Member

    Butler-Evansville? Are you sure that's what he had or is Katz on freaking crack?

    Evansville won't come within 10 miles whiffing distance of the asscrack of the tournament.
     
  2. Michael_ Gee

    Michael_ Gee Well-Known Member

    If at the Herald I had been invited to participate (ha!) in this event, I'd have gladly accepted out of pure curiosity. I'd have written about it, too.
    But, of course, it's up to every writer to emphasize this was a mock process with all the power and personal relationships of college basketball drained from the equation. Hell, with all the conference tournaments drained from the equation.
    In other words, as long as the reader is sure this is how the process works IN THEORY, I think it's a legit and worthwhile thing to write about.
     
  3. Twoback

    Twoback Active Member

    From reading the various accounts, I believe Evansville was one of the teams designated as an automatic bid winner -- designed to make the selection process more challenging for those invited.
     
  4. Not even remotely close to comparable.
    You simply cannot write a piece claiming to dispel all the "myths" -- which is to say, all the criticisms ever made of the people who asked you in --of the selection process based on a canned event like this. Yet that's what the invitees did. That's very bad journalism.
    And watch, when the brackets come out, and power conferences miraculously get what they want, and match-ups occur that miraculously benefit CBS, the response from the committee will be, "Well, we invited media representatives from all over the country in in February and they said the process was totally objective."
     
  5. DisembodiedOwlHead

    DisembodiedOwlHead Active Member

    Check the link ... scroll down a bit and he has the mock field ... http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/columns/story?columnist=katz_andy&id=2758650

    Butler-Evansville as a 4/13 matchup in the Columbus/Midwest bracket.
     
  6. Twoback

    Twoback Active Member

    So let's say the power conferences get a bunch of teams this year. So you'd be right this time. Last year, with Air Force, George Mason and three Mo Valley teams, you'd have been dead wrong. You can slide the argument around to suit whatever ticks you off at that given moment.
    The pieces that I've read haven't said the process was "totally objective." They said it was more difficult than imagined, constructed differently than imagined and yes, devoid of some of the silly mechanisms (such as checking off the number of teams from a given conference and creating attractive matchups) that many presume are involved.
     
  7. Montezuma's Revenge

    Montezuma's Revenge Active Member

    Derived from "shrinkage," I believe.
     
  8. Montezuma's Revenge

    Montezuma's Revenge Active Member


    Exactly. Does the NCAA have an agenda on this? Sure. But I'd argue there's a greater good in allowing some people to get a much better idea of the intricacies of the process. That doesn't have to preclude people from examining iffy decisions by the real seleciton committee.
     
  9. Cosmo

    Cosmo Well-Known Member

    Ah, BYH still moaning in not-so-subtle fashion about Hofstra being jobbed by the committee last year. It wouldn't be SportsJournalists.com without it. :D
     
  10. Except that's there's no proof that can be derived from this event that this is "the process." Put some writers in the room in March, and then you'll have a point.
     
  11. JackS

    JackS Member

    Wake me up when the NCAA invites reporters to sit in on the *actual* selection committee proceedings.

    Until then, *yawn*.
     
  12. ondeadline

    ondeadline Well-Known Member

    <a href="http://www.850thebuzz.com/podcasts/D.mp3">
    Here's a radio interview with occasional SportsJournalists.com poster Mike DeCourcy about being part of the process.</a>
     
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