NCAA Tournament Seedings and a Reorganization Proposal.

Okay so a simple look at this year's bracket as of 11:25am PST shows a lot of upsets. In fact if we isolate match ups between teams not in the 1-16, 2-15, and 8-9 games the record of underdogs vs top dogs is 5 wins to 5 losses. Complete parody. As I look at the scoreboard now Cornell a 12 seed is up big on #5 Temple and #6 Xavier is about to beat #11 Minnesota. So the records will remain the same. Every year 14,13,12,11,and 10 seeds do very well in their first round match ups. Almost always these seedings are reserved for the best of the Mid-majors and a few of those who just got into the tournament from major conferences. 

So what does it mean that these underdogs (ranked 40-56 in the tournament) are even with the teams that would are ranked 9-25 by the tournament selection committee? I think it simply means that beyond the top 10 programs in any given year there is very little separation in terms of talent and coaching. Today, top programs get to keep top players for only 1-2 years while lower ranked programs get good players who are able to develop over 4 years and can often outsmart and outwork their younger more talented counterparts from major conferences. This is good for college basketball and certainly makes it more enjoyable for me to watch. However what it does argue for is less weight on "power conference" teams.

Okay so in light of my conservative consumption bent in this blog I have some tournament set up suggestions. Today the tournament is set up into regions (west, midwest, east, south, or whatever...). It would be a much more sustainable solution and more profitable solution if geographically-named regions really meant something. The West region bracket should include only west region teams. That way travel itineraries are shorted, less wasteful, and the fans a the games will remain interested in the match ups outside of the team they came to follow. Additionally, teams could take pride and say we won the western region championship this year. Then western region fans might cheer for their champion as they play in the final 4.

Who would get into the regional round of 16 teams? It cannot be for instance 8 Pac-10 teams in the hypothetical western region tournament. Each region would have to be divided up well enough to make a rule that each conference champion would get a bid plus a few at-large bigs. The at-large bigs could be decided similarly to how they are now, but only compared with other teams from your region. Clearly this is just one of many ideas. Tournament organizers are now considering a mega tournament with 96 teams. This would not be a more sustainable solution. We can see that as we get past the 56th "best" teams each year the quality of the product declines somewhat. However, by keeping things regional perhaps each region could make different rules and decide their own bracket qualifications and sizes.

I wonder what the tournament organizers would think of this idea?

Relationship Commitment

During my entire adulthood the issue of marriage and partnerships has been a highly politicized issue. The primary issue has been reconciling the lack of equality extended to non-heterosexual couples --- or for some the idea of preventing this from happening because of their religious or personal viewpoints. Today, many large companies and local governments circumvent the unequal distribution of marriage rights by providing partnership benefits. In some cases states are passing laws to allow gay marriage while others are banning it even if it is passed nationally. In my personal view, I would be happier if marriage was retitled something with less of a root in paternal ownership and intertwinement with religion. However, tradition is hard to break and indeed many marriages today are based more upon wholesome commitment and love and have nothing to do with male ownership or religion. For many people marriage is one of the most important parts of their life and rightly so. However, it perplexes me how people that enjoy something so much would deny it to so many others. 

Life partnerships or marriage is an important social institution. It affords participants community validity, financial benefits, health security benefits, and important informational rights of privilege during times of health emergencies. More than that it is a symbolic bit of identity for the couple within the relationship. In my somewhat independent mind, I have liked believing that it is unnecessary to involve the government or other other institutions to validate a relationship. However, the reality is that we do need the social privileges associated with these cultural institutions. A situation lacking institutional validity might work with universal health care security and use of alternative legal paperwork to afford partners the rights to care for one another. However, marriage links all the benefits together in one simple package. Additionally, while it is an annoying hassle to deal with all the paperwork and legal issues of a marriage perhaps the symbolic bond and legal hoops are also an important part of the process. They provide a level of trust and disincentive to giving in to the many difficulties that can drain on a modern day partnership. 

Conservative Consumtion

The purpose of this blog is to provide an outlet for my own response to the daily grind of our society. However, I welcome comments and hope that the blog can also be an educational source for topics on which I am more familiar with. However, readers should note that I will not be an expert on many of the topics I post about and therefore they should use their own conservative judgement about the information. While I am not a conservative in the political sense. I contend that through conservative consumption of products and information we can help make the world a better place. I hope to challenge you to think locally about current events and try to make connections between global problems and local actions. An obvious example is climate change. While climate change may not harm everyone on the planet (certainly not the wealthy), everyone can benefit from some of the solutions to this problem. Ratcheting down your consumption of all goods (stop wasting things) is more efficient for your own personal budget. Using green energy sources (e.g. solar and wind) and low impact transportation means (bike, walk, bus) will reduce local pollution in addition to the reduction in global CO2 emissions. I think you can see the bend of this blog and I hope you keep reading. I will try to make regular (weekly) posts.