NCAA Responds to Shrill CBS

If you saw the NCAA Basketball Tournament Selection Show last Sunday on CBS, you saw NCAA Selection Chairman Craig Littlepage suffering a classic 60-Minutes-Style drive-by media lynching from CBS’ Billy Packer and Jim Nantz. Packer and Nantz were outraged that the “mid-major” Missouri Valley Conference placed four teams in the tournament, the same number as the media darlings in the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big East, Big 10, and other “major” conferences.

Now, it’s Littlepage’s turn[*1] :

But what riled Littlepage was Packer’s assertion the committee look at a five-year track record of teams and conferences. Littlepage and past committee chairmen have stated regularly that past performances have no bearing on the brackets.

And Littlepage said the reason teams from the traditional power conferences fare better in the tournament is that they typically get higher seeds.

“He may have an opinion about that or the two of them may have an opinion about that, and they are certainly free to have those opinions and express those opinions,” Littlepage said of Packer and his CBS broadcast partner, Jim Nantz. “But to look at this in terms of the partnership, you would hope there would be a little better understanding of what it is that we do and an accurate reflection of the facts as they know them to be. Facts, instead of opinions, would be helpful.”

Via YOCO[*2] .