It's been over 2 months since the NCAA Selection Sunday. A month or so since the NCAA Tournament concluded. The ACC is still ticked off at the fact that only 4 of their 12 schools got an NCAA Tournament invite. Sure only North Carolina made it out of the first weekend of the NCAA Tournament, and the Tarheels were the only ACC team to be seeded in the top 4 lines, that's irrelevant.
It's also irrelevant that they only had 4 teams ranked in the RPI-top 50. What matters is that their conference was ranked #1 in the RPI so the conference should have had more teams in the NCAA Tournament.
ACC Commissioner John Swofford has sent a letter to the Division I men's basketball committee requesting that conference strength be added to the list of criteria considered when the NCAA tournament field is selected.
Coaches say they plan to remind the media more often next season about the conference's strength.
Oh good, as if college football coaches whining about rankings for the BCS wasn't enough, now the college basketball coaches will join the fun well before the NCAA Tournament.
Even better plan for the ACC to talk about conference strength, when most think the Big East looks like the deepest conference for 2008-09.
Basically the ACC wants the NCAA Tournament Selection Committee to minimize the individual RPI in selecting the 34 at-large teams more in favor of the conference RPI rankings. At least, when it's convenient.
Sports
Is this really worth re-hashing? After this year? As the article points out, in the three years since the ACC expanded to 12 teams for football, they have fallen in NCAA Tournament performance to only 19-15. They even had 7 teams in the NCAA Tournament last year, and fell flat. They had 4 teams this year and fell flat as a conference. Only UNC has been reliable for them.
As usual, this is about the money. For the coaches, it is being able to keep making it as a head coach. Making the NCAA Tournament is vital for the coach in any major conference program for staying employed. For conferences, more teams in the NCAA Tournament means more money to all the programs.
