There’s going to be a lot of disagreement about the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament. Like whether Drake is the best upset pick or if Florida can win it all – and the answer is yes. But here’s something pretty much everyone can agree with. We’re all against UNC, or North Carolina. Except Tarheel fans, of course. But the rest of the country, we definitely want them to lose.
It's not anything UNC did, other than play relatively mediocre basketball most of the season despite being ranked in the top 10 to start the year. It’s that Carolina was the last at-large team picked into the 68-team field, ahead of other bubble teams like West Virginia and Indiana, the former of which was assumed to be safely in. Almost every expert had UNC on the outside after losing to Duke in the ACC Tournament. And that’s largely because they went 1-12 in what the selection committee calls Quad 1 games, which another way of saying games against good teams. There’s a lot of criteria that go into who gets to play in March, but historically, quality wins is at the top of the list, especially for teams like North Carolina that gets to play against a bunch of good teams. Texas, another bubble team that just sneaked in, went 7-10 in Quad 1. West Virginia went 6-10, while Indiana went 4-13. You can see the issue here, and certainly why anyone not affiliated with North Carolina might feel as if this process wasn’t entirely clean.
That hunch got more intense when people realized that UNC’s Athletic Director Bubba Cunningham was actually the chair of the selection committee. Meaning he led the group that chose who those final teams were and weren’t. Now there’s rules and protocols to supposedly prevent any foul play, like you have to leave the room when the committee is discussing your team. But it’s hard to imagine not feeling the influence of your leader even if they’re grabbing a coffee down the hall. What’s worse, at least from a PR perspective, is when people found out that Cunningham got a $100,000 bonus when the Heels made the dance. And he can get even more if Carolina wins. So it’s probably hard for folks in Morgantown to buy that this was simply a numbers game, or at least the numbers they were led to believe mattered. And when Cunningham told reporters some data point called WAB – or Wins Above the Bubble – was suddenly more important, it was a real heel turn for the Heels.
There’s a lot to unpackage here, which is why you can basically watch non-stop NCAA Tournament preview television for like 96 hours straight if you so desire. And I’ve only watched like half of that, tops. But the first important point is that yes, objectively, this was a bad pick. And yes, it’s hard to imagine that Cunningham’s presence didn’t influence the committee. I don’t especially believe that Bubba did anything nefarious. But I just can’t get to the idea that he might have returned to the room and have his colleagues tell him they’re going with Boise State instead and not have it be really awkward. So if anything, it seems reasonable that if getting into the tournament is that important, and economically speaking it is, then perhaps sitting AD’s shouldn’t just leave the room. They shouldn’t be on the committee in the first place.
Second, we shouldn’t view this incident in a vacuum, but rather as part of the larger shift in college athletics, where players move more than Army brats and power teams and conferences are sucking up all the oxygen. The SEC got 14 bids this year. That’s pretty much a cash vacuum that will leave other conferences, even the once mighty ACC, a bit light in the wallet. So understand that UNC getting a bid over West Virginia or especially Boise isn’t just a chance to play more round ball. It’s a survival tactic.
And finally, you may know that UNC already played its first game last night, a play-in game for the final four at-large selections. They beat fellow 11 seed San Diego by almost 30 in a game that wasn’t as close as the score may indicate. And most people have them favored over 6 seeded Ole Miss in the first round. So whether or not they should have made it in the first place, it looks like they might just stick around. Even though most of America would rather them not.
Keith Strudler is the Dean of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler.
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