What the BCS Can Learn From Butler and March Madness

If the BCS had their way, these guys would have gone home a long time ago.

Ask anyone outside the state of Indiana, and they’ll tell you that Butler has almost no chance of beating Duke in tonight’s championship game. They’re probably right: most analysts put the Bulldogs’ chances of winning between ten and twenty percent. But Butler has already proven us wrong five times so far. Who’s to say they can’t pull out a sixth shocking win?

Perhaps even more incredible than their miracle run, however, is the fact that they’re even allowed to play in the title game at all. 65 teams, including at least one from every conference, are given a chance to compete for the national championship each year in college basketball. In football, however, the BCS limits that number to two, and it puts a stranglehold on the number of teams even eligible to crack those two. If the basketball tournament were governed by the same rules that run the BCS, we’d be looking at a title game between Kansas and Kentucky. It would be a great game, to be sure, but we also would have been deprived of dramatic upsets from teams like Cornell, Northern Iowa, Murray State, and St. Mary’s.

I think you’ll agree with me that basketball’s model is much, much more interesting.

But here’s the question: as dramatic and entertaining as March Madness is each year, how often do we actually see teams outside the six power conferences get a crack at the title? It’s exciting to be included in the field of 65, sure, but Arkansas-Pine Bluff made the field, and they never had a realistic chance of winning the championship. How many mid-majors have actually made the title game, and of those, have any of them actually won?

For clarity’s sake, let’s define “mid-major” as “non-BCS school”. We’ve seen plenty of power teams make Final Four runs, despite being outside the power conferences (I’m looking at you, Memphis and UNLV). Some non-BCS schools like Xavier and Gonzaga aren’t considered to be mid-majors anymore because of their consistently high level of play. So let’s just even things out and focus on teams who don’t play in the ACC, Big 12, Big East, Big Ten, Pac-10, or SEC.

Using those criteria, we find 9 mid-major teams that have played in title games since 1979 (the Bird vs. Magic game, and the moment I feel college basketball really started to matter), coming from just seven universities. (Louisville and Houston, both from Conference USA, each played in two title games.) That means out of 64 spots between 1979-2010, only about 14% of them were mid-majors. Of those nine, six of them game before 1990. In the 20 years since, mid-majors have a title game appearance rate of just 7.5%. Granted, it’s far higher than the 0% rate for mid-majors in football, but it’s not all that impressive. As for title wins, mid-majors have gone just 3-5 so far in championship games, with all three wins coming before 1991.

So here’s what all this tells us: mid-majors are more than welcome to come participate in the Big Dance. They’d just better not expect to win.

This creates an interesting precedent for the BCS. If they’re looking for a way to silence the complaints of teams like Boise State, Utah, and TCU, why not just let them in? If their success rates are comparable to basketball teams’ (and the formats are similar enough that there’s no reason to think they wouldn’t be), their chances of making a championship appearance, let alone winning one, are negligible.

It’s a win-win situation. Mid-majors feel happy that they’re being included and being given a shot at the title. Power conferences are happy because they can continue winning championships unabated. Viewers are happy because they’d get to see upsets. And happy viewers mean high TV ratings, which has to please network officials and BCS commissioners.

Clearly, it’s not as simple as all this. I understand there are real logistical problems that would need to be ironed out. You would need to find a way to give everyone equal representation in the postseason, or at the very least give everyone a chance. There are TV contracts to be signed, bowl agreements to be arranged, and students’ classwork to be considered. (That last one was a joke. Basketball players get up to three weeks off from classes during March. Why are we pretending that football players have to go to class?) But if your biggest fear over a playoff is seeing a mid-major hold up the trophy, you can put those fears to rest. It’s just not that likely.

Paradoxically, that’s what Butler’s heroic run to the title game has shown us. There’s a reason people get so excited when a mid-major gets to the championship game. It’s the same reason we were so excited when George Mason crashed the 2006 Final Four, or when Davidson nearly knocked off eventual national champion Kansas in 2008. It’s exciting because it’s so astronomically unlikely. In real life, when David and Goliath face off, David almost never gets that shot from his sling off. No, usually Goliath lops off David’s head and takes a victory lap. Just ask 30 years’ worth of mid-majors in college basketball.

One strange note to end on: Duke has twice faced mid-majors in the title game, facing UNLV in 1990 and Louisville in 1986. Both times, the Blue Devils lost. So while I fully expect Duke to win tonight, and even more fully expect the BCS to be rooting for them, that’s something that might give Butler fans some extra hope.