Pass the Pepto!: It's way past time the NCAA stopped screwing over mid-major schools in the basketball tournament

 Today, millions of wanna-be handicappers are filling out brackets for the NCAA basketball tournaments, both men's & women's. There's always an upset lurking in the first weekend of play, but for mid-major colleges & universities, some of whom you've probably never heard of, first round games against teams from either the Big 10, Big 12, ACC, or SEC, might as well be queued with the theme from Mission: Impossible.

All 4 Power 4 conferences control the top seeds. That's a given, considering some schools, like, for example, Michigan or Duke, are ratings draws in their native areas.

Take, for example, Long Island University-Brooklyn, which is being fed to Arizona in the West Regional. Or Ivy League champion Pennsylvania, coached by former Siena & Iowa coach Fran McCaffery, a #14 seed in the South Regional vs. Illinois from the Big 10. At least it's a team McCaffery is familiar with. Or Siena, which is being sent on a suicide mission to play Duke. The suits in charge of the selection committee don't give a rat's butt about reality in terms of these matchups. The tournament has been bloated for years because the NCAA's media partners (currently CBS/Paramount+ and TNT and their sister channels, plus HBO Max) want to maximize the television ratings by putting the games on as many outlets as humanly possible. They throw bones to the mid-majors every year, but won't let them sit at the big boys' table. Ever.

After all the work that went into reforming college football's postseason, and it still needs a few tweaks, for what it's worth, the NCAA is not willing to change their business model for basketball. There's too much money involved to allow the Sienas and Penns of the world a fair opportunity. They have to make their own luck.

The bottom line is, the mid-majors get dissed every year. Which is why they should have a patron saint around this time of year. Like this guy.......

This is why the only college basketball I even bother to pay attention to is close to home, with Siena & UAlbany. Politics rules the college game, and has for several years. That needs to change, preferably yesterday.