The NCAA Tournament is awesome, this is not up for debate, it is the single greatest sporting event in the world, upsets, buzzer-beaters, unknowns exploding onto the scene, rivalry games, it has it all. But, the one thing that is also not debatable, programs from outside the Power 6 (7 if you count the American) don't get a fair shake when it comes to tournament selection, ask Monmouth a couple years ago, Illinois State last year, St. Bonaventure a couple years ago, Louisiana Tech in 2014. Not only that, non Power 6 teams routinely get screwed in the seeding process, even when Wichita State got a 1 seed for being unbeaten, they got shafted and played a seriously talented and underachieving Kentucky team in the second round, a team that would go on to play for a title. So what can we learn out of all of this? That there needs to be change in how the committee deals with mid-majors.
I propose that we keep the field at 68, however, make the First Four a play-in game, which exclusively features the 4 best mid-majors that wouldn't have gotten in on resume alone, they can't be the auto-bids, they have to be at-large teams, and this play-in would only feature at-large mid-majors that couldn't make the 32 normal at-larges allowed, the bubble would be moved to the last 4 teams that wouldn't play in the play-in games, the top 2 11 seeds and bottom 2 10 seeds would become the bubble line. For example, this year, the 4 mid-majors I would put in this First Four would be: Old Dominion, St. Bonaventure, 1 of South Dakota/South Dakota St., and 1 of Murray St./Belmont. I would like to know what you guys think of this proposal, the committee would probably never go for it, but I think It would infinitely improve both college basketball, and the NCAA tourney, while also getting more national exposure to good programs that wouldn't otherwise get it. That's all I got!