We're almost done with March Madness, and it's been a fantastic tournament this year. But that doesn't overshadow how everything started. Several good teams wound up watching the tournament from home. Some because of the selection committees big name, big dollar bias (St Mary's) and other because they lost in the conference tournament and didn't get in despite a fantastic regular season record. (Vermont) Now, how do you go about fixing this issue? Well I have already proposed a different idea for deciding on who get's into March Madness several weeks ago, (read the by clicking Here) I want to propose something a little more radical to help some of these mid majors like Vermont, UMBC, Albany, Iona, Canisius and Rider get more respect. (Want to know what these teams have in common? They all had 20 or more wins. More wins than Texas, Oklahoma, and Alabama) Luckily I have a solution. Merging the America East with the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference. Would you look at that? Would you just look at it? That's a 20 team conference. 20 teams. Cross town rivalry games all over the place. Blue pins are teams in the 'America Conference' and maroon are in the 'Atlantic Conference.' The big change here is UMBC, Stony Brook and Hartford go 'Atlantic' while Canisius, Niagra, Siena and Marist go to 'America.' What would that have done to the end of season standings? Well, if you keep records the same as this year, here is what the final standings for the 'America Atlantic East' would look like.
This new league now has 6 teams with 20+ wins. There is no way you can ignore a league of this many teams with that many teams winning 20+ games. With a league like this, odds are that based on a stronger schedule alone, Vermont and Rider become the looks to get in while UMBC becomes the third team via the conference tournament. Think what the A-10 did this year with Rhode Island, St Boneventure and Davidson this year.
I believe these two leagues coming together in some capacity can only be a good thing. And maybe 20 teams is too many. Maybe you drop the 4 weakest schools, Monmouth, St Peters, Maine and Binghamton and you have 16 teams, with every team in each conference playing their counterpart from the previous season home and away to round out the schedule, i.e, 1v1, 2v2, 7v7 etc. Anyway, what do you think? Would a merger like this help both conferences be taken more seriously when it comes to March Madness and getting better players? Let me know in the comments!
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