One other thought, we really can't screen for realism until the conferences are aligned like real life, and it sounds like this is never gonna happen. Anyone want to create a poll asking this question? Could be an interesting thread.

Posted by rednu on 5/20/2014 5:06:00 PM (view original):
If it brings in more Sims at the expense of human-coached teams, I'm strongly against it.

If it allows a weaker human-led team to take the spot of a human team that was closer to qualifying for the national tournament, I'm strongly against it.

The proposal, as I see it, really only protects people who are the only or almost-only human in a league full of Sims from suffering disaster due to one bad RNG night in the conference tournament. 1. If we want to talk realism, this is about as real as it gets -- teams have bad nights, Cinderella shows at the ball, the postseason gets wild. Heartbreak is part of the equation. Why do we want to protect against that by "guaranteeing" something?  2. Careful scheduling of non-conference games provides the same protection you're trying for here, so the "insurance" against missing the post-season altogether is already in the coach's hands (aside from that first season if the human tags in for SimAi and was handed a randomly generated schedule). It might require a little more thought than some give the process right now, but that's an element of the game coaches could learn and if you're in a position where 12-16 of your games every year are known to be league games against SIms, then you'd better be giving some thought to those 10 non-con slots for the good of your team.

Basically, I just don't see the "why" for wanting to do this.

I think the one really bad RNG, that happens to occur in the conference tourney even though the human has the vastly superior team, is the reason why the guarantee should be in place.

Lower division (or low DI) conferences are ghost towns for a reason.  Everything is stacked in favor of the heavily populated or power conferences.  There must be an incentive for humans to join smaller conferences...and stay there.  From a business perspective, it makes no sense for WIS to want a handful of conferences to have 12 humans and most other conferences to be empty to 25% full.  Every slot by a human is revenue.  Morgan State generates the same revenue potential for WIS as does North Carolina.  I would argue it generates even more because Morgan State will not advance as far in the NT and will get fewer credits.

WIS should be doing everything it can to make non-power schools attractive.  Guaranteeing a PIT bid to the regular season champ just might make someone stay in the MEAC whereas WIS generally has no problem filling the ACC mostly full every season rollover.

I think this last statement makes a lot of sense. I also think this applies to conference (re)alignment. If I were a potential sign up for HD, and I was bouncing around the app, and noticed old conference alignments (for example, the Big East and A10), I would figure this site had grown stale. I would possibly not join because of this.

What's the maximum number of regular season "Conference Champions" you can have in a conference?  12?  This is not a good idea.

Posted by llamanunts on 5/22/2014 8:39:00 AM (view original):
What's the maximum number of regular season "Conference Champions" you can have in a conference?  12?  This is not a good idea.

what? do you mean before factoring in tie breakers?

Another way to formulate the test would be the team with the best rpi or best projection report status other than the team that gets the auto bid.  That would eliminate the two division champs issue and would adjust for conferences where one division is human heavy and the other is not.

So, lets say that a team that is 150 in the projection report wins the CT and gets the auto bid, one could then give a bid to the team that was 70 or 90 or 120 gets to the PIT. 

One could say that it only happens if that second team is

a. in the top 100 or 150 on the projection report??
b. higher on the projection report than the team that won the CT?

I dont know, but this would be a solution that avoids some of the noted problems......if one wants to do anything here

Posted by llamanunts on 5/22/2014 8:39:00 AM (view original):
What's the maximum number of regular season "Conference Champions" you can have in a conference?  12?  This is not a good idea.

I think the idea here is to match the RL NIT selection (so there'd only be 1 "Conference Champion").  This from the wikipedia page on NIT: "The NCAA announced a revamped selection process starting with the 2006 tournament. The main highlights are:

• Teams are no longer required to have .500 or greater records to receive bids. Even with this change, however, all teams receiving invitations for the NIT have had .500 or greater records.
• Similar to the automatic bids the NCAA Tournament grants for all conference tournament champions, all teams that won regular-season conference championships but failed to earn NCAA tournament bids are guaranteed places in the NIT.  [The underlining is mine.]"  

That shouldn't turn out to be too bad in most seasons (many conference champs would win the CT or get an at-large bid anyhow).  So I could come off of my "strongly disagree" position to an "indifferent" position.   Many should note the first bullet-point in regard to other issues presently being discussed.

Posted by jtt8355 on 5/22/2014 9:27:00 AM (view original):

Posted by llamanunts on 5/22/2014 8:39:00 AM (view original):
What's the maximum number of regular season "Conference Champions" you can have in a conference?  12?  This is not a good idea.

what? do you mean before factoring in tie breakers?

Yeah, I guess.  Was under-caffeinated and thinking of the listings on your History tab.

In the most recent Iba tournament, only UNC-Wilmington would've earned a PIT bid based on their regular season championship.  All the other champions got in anyway. 

In Naismith, there would've been three....James Madison, Rider, and N.Carolina A&T