NATIONAL COLLEGE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCE

February 25, 2004

Bob Bowlsby

BOB BOWLSBY: Thank you, Bill. Thank you all for joining us. It's good to be with you and it's good to be on the brink of March Madness here. The RPI gets a lot of publicity, obviously. It certainly is an important tool for us, but I wouldn't say it's the most important. Obviously, we take into account a lot of different data: non-conference records, non-conference opponents, road record, how teams did in their last 10 games, their record against the Top 50, against the Top 100, whether they have any real good wins or any real bad losses. There are lots of factors that we take into account. While the RPI is a good tool for us, it really is a blunt object, and it isn't particularly effective in discriminating among a group of teams that may be eight teams among the last group that are fighting for three or four spots in the tournament. While we utilize it, it gets lots of attention, I wouldn't say it is the principal tool that we use. But it is an important tool and it's one that we continue to refine and continue to utilize in a lot of different ways as part of the process and as part of our season-long effort.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, we're particularly concerned about having a situation where a lower-seeded team has a home crowd, not necessarily a home court, but a home crowd advantage over a higher-seeded team. I have to admit that it is more art than science. I think we have to take a lot of different circumstances into account when we make those decisions. But as a general rule of thumb, you won't see us putting teams in situations where there is the potential to have a lower-seeded team with a home-crowd advantage. There are some ways, especially when you get to the regionals, that some unexpected things happen. But as a general statement, that is our principle, and it's the one I think we've been pretty meticulous about trying to adhere to. Now, to answer your question more specifically, there isn't a mileage requirement or stipulation. But we certainly are going to look at mileage and the distance that fans travel and the possibility or even likelihood that the lower-seeded team is going to have an advantage.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, I think, you know, that 4-5 line is kind of like the 8-9 line. There typically is not a lot of difference between those two teams in both of those situations. I think that you have to be pretty careful not to create a situation where one team is disadvantaged. We want it to be as fair an opportunity. And the reason we seed 1 through 65, and the reason we put people in the bracket the way we do, is we want to separate the best teams as far into the tournament as we can, and we want to make sure that those teams that have earned the opportunity for the higher seed are in a situation where they don't ultimately end up disadvantaged as a result of that higher seed.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, certainly that's a factor we take into account. But I would suggest to you that it's the body of work that caused them to win that championship, that is to say who they beat along the way, where they beat them, when they beat them, what the circumstances were. The elements that contribute to that championship are probably more important than the championship itself. Now, having said that, a team that goes through the season and wins a season-long conference championship has obviously won some big games, they've won games in hostile environments. One of the things the committee members look for as we have surveillance for the various leagues around the country is, how are teams playing in the critical match-ups? We know a preponderance of the games are won by the home team. How have teams played on the road? A regular-season conference championship is important, but as a standalone item, it may not be as important as the body of work and the elements that went in to getting there. So both of them are things that we will take into account, but you could have a team that finished second in a league that had just about as good a portfolio and just about as good of credentials and is not going to be significantly disadvantaged by being the runner-up versus the champion because the body of work is going to be very similar. So, you know, that's when other factors come into effect. How have they played the last 10 games? How did they play in their conference tournament? Did they go out and play people during the course of the regular year? How did they do against the Top 50 when they had a chance for those match-ups? Did very have any real bad losses? As a standalone element, a regular-season conference championship is a good accomplishment because it is the result of many positive occurrences during the course of the year.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, I think it shows up in a lot of different locations in our discussions. Clearly it comes up during discussions of the overall strength of a league. It also comes up during the discussion of the non-conference section of the body of work. We do want people to go out and play, and I would draw your attention to the situation a few years ago when Georgia got into the tournament with what I recall to be a 16-12 record. They also played the number one schedule in the country. I don't think it's all that important necessarily that you be one of the top five schedule teams in the country or the top 25, for that matter. I think what we're looking for is some demonstration that an institution went out and attempted to play people, and attempted to demonstrate how they could play against a representative field from, you know, whatever context they're in. Some of the major programs play coast-to-coast, border-to-border, others do so more on a regional basis. But there's an opportunity to demonstrate that you are going out and trying to play people. That definitely comes into consideration when we are in the process because the one thing it does is it allows us a lot of cross-referencing. When you've played a good, strong representative schedule, it gives us an opportunity to compare in pre-season and regular season against some other leagues. So those things are valuable. I think that as a general statement, going out and playing people is far superior, win or lose, to playing a weak schedule. And you may recall a few years ago there were a couple of pretty high-profile programs with more than 20 wins that ended up not getting in the tournament because their non-conference schedule was so weak. So we're looking for a representative schedule. It isn't that important that it be the toughest schedule in the world, but it is important it's a representative schedule and one that allows us to differentiate that program from others. Yes, I think you're right. There are a number of schools that are in that situation right now, and it's a little early to be drawing any conclusions. And I don't think committee members are. I think we will go into selection weekend with some very difficult discussions to have. You've hit upon one of them that will be a difficult discussion. Do you take a team with three or four, five more wins versus somebody that has really gone out and played a tough schedule? It's always one of the most difficult things the committee has to undertake.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, we try and go as far down into the bracket as we can. The bracketing system we're using now has been successful in keeping something approaching 50% of the teams either in their home time zone or within one time zone of their home location. And a lot has been made of that from a ticket sale standpoint. But from the committee perspective, we really did it a lot more so that mom and dad and the students of the University can get to those games. It's really about having fans be able to participate in the fortunes of their team more than it is selling tickets. But clearly selling the tickets is a highly desirable by-product. But we are going to try and work our way as far down into the bracket as we possibly can. And I think for the most part, we've been successful in doing that through the first four or five lines, and then it gets pretty complicated after that because as more teams from individual leagues get in, they have to be separated through the regional finals, the fourth team can't go into a regional where any other team from their league is currently residing. So we have a number of principles that we have to employ in order to filter through this process. I think as a general statement, we've been pretty successful in doing it down through line five, but we're also looking for the opportunity to do it throughout the bracket. If we can keep somebody close to home who is on line 12 that disadvantage that team that they're going to play on line five or a subsequent opponent the next round, we're going to try and keep them close to home if we possibly can, as well. It's a principle that we use throughout the bracket, but we're particularly meticulous about it in the first four or five lines.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, there are some occasions with some of the higher-seeded teams where they do the bracketing system consideration. They end up getting sent away in the first and second rounds with the idea they would be closer to home in the regional if it worked out that they got that far. But it gets considerably more complex obviously once you get past the first round.

BOB BOWLSBY: We take into account every bit of information we can. Of course, you know there's a little bit of difficulty using score differential in any sort of constructive way because, you know, who knows if the team was ahead by 30 and then played all their reserves and it ends up being a seven-point ballgame, or whether it was triple overtime. Obviously, in the case of the overtime, we know. In the case of the other one, we don't know. We draw upon whatever details we can possibly glean from it. I think that's one place where we rely upon the surveillance process that we have. I think many of you are aware that each of the nine other committee members, other than myself, have either three or four conferences that they have primary surveillance for. In addition to them kind of being the expert on those conferences, all of us try and watch the key match-ups or the big games from around the country. We have a lot of technology at our fingertips in order to accomplish that. So hopefully we've got a bunch of eyes on those critical games. To the extent that perhaps some of us have had a chance to watch those games and could comment on it, somebody's a No. 2 seed, a bubble team has played a really spectacular game against somebody, the person that has the surveillance on that league or somebody else could step up and say, "Listen, I've seen these guys play, I've seen them in person." We spend the entire year watching basketball games. And we're not seeing every game that's played, but between the 10 of us, and with the staff, we're seeing an awful lot of basketball games during the course of the year and talking to a lot of basketball people. Sometimes with regard to that last pool of teams, it may be something as simple as talking to Les Robinson, who has coached a lot of games and saying, "Coach, we got one slot and two teams left. Which one of these teams would you prefer not to play in the NCAA tournament? Which one is the better team?" You know there's a fair amount of subjectivity in some of what we do. But we draw upon every scrap of information that we possibly get. A situation where there's a little bit of information like you described, certainly we're going to take that into consideration.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, it's a very good question. And I'm glad you asked it because it's one of the things that gets bantered around among media representatives and among fans, as well. As a stated policy, the committee does not have a rule of thumb or a written policy on .500 or higher conference records. And we have had teams get in with lower than a .500 conference record. It isn't something that I would say isn't going to happen. But just as we look at a lot of other factors, we're going to look at that one. The strength of the league plays into that, how they got to the record they got to has something to do with it. Who they beat in the league and who they lost to in the league is going to have a lot to do with it. Just as the question about the conference championship is pertinent, so is this. You may be 7-9 in a real good conference, and a couple of your wins are over people at the top of the league. That's the sort of thing that may catch the eye of a committee member. Likewise, you can look at it and say, "Here is a team that's playing in a league, they've got a losing record in the league, and they only played these three schools once, and they didn't play these other schools at all." So the answer is it depends a lot on the league and it depends a lot on, you know, the individual work that that institution has done. In a league that's a full round-robin, that's a real tough league, you might make a case for a team being pretty darn good. It's important to remember that our task is to take the 31 automatic qualifiers and the 34 best at-larges that we can find. Those best at-larges, while most of them are going to have a winning conference record, it wouldn't be unheard of that somebody could get in with a less than .500 conference record if the body of work was such that they were deemed to be one of the best 34 in the country.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, I could probably also have staff respond to that. But as I understand the process and the principles that we have in place, that would be something that would be a committee deliberation that we could end up adopting as one of our principles. It would be something that, you know, we would have to undertake a period of due diligence, and there would be some people we would want to talk to about it. But as I understand it, that would be within the purview of the committee to put that sort of filter and that sort of standard in if we chose to do so.

BOB BOWLSBY: We certainly want to listen to coaches, and Coach Knight has been around a long time. In deference to that, we added Gerald Myers, his athletic director, to the committee, who is a former coach. But we've got people like Les Robinson, Judy Rose, Gary Walters, Craig Littlepage, Floyd Kerr, all of whom are former basketball coaches, even though they've moved on to administrative roles. There's a lot of basketball knowledge on there, and there's a lot of top-flight administrative capability and potential on there, as well. I think we have a good balance of athletics administrators and former coaches. I feel very good about our committee, and have felt good about it throughout the time I've been involved. I think the basketball committee takes great care. When I was first involved with the basketball committee, my predecessor at Iowa, Bump Elliott, told me, "My years on the basketball committee were among the most enjoyable that I had as an athletics director. You will be find it to be one of the most gratifying and enjoyable processes you're involved in within your career because of the fact that there's so much integrity and that people care so much about what it is they're doing." You know, I think these folks taking their role very seriously, and there's the right blend of administrators and commissioners and former coaches on the committee.

BOB BOWLSBY: You know, I would never say "never." We're all fallible, no doubt about that. In that particular situation, we made some amendments to the computer program that we use. I think we've gotten that glitch taken care of. We were actually protected last year through the first two rounds, but the program didn't take it up for what was a potential third round match-up in the regional semifinals. That's been taken care of. We also have committee members that have what are called safety nets. And they each have responsibility for safety nets. An example of that would be assigning somebody to a site, for instance, where they had played three or more games during the course of a regular year, or watching to make sure when we put people up on the bracket that we don't have institutions from the same conference meeting before the appropriate time in the tournament. We may want to watch for regular-season rematches that we would like to avoid, some things like that. We have the human approach to the safety net process, and we also have a computer program that applies filters that are intended to keep us from violating our own principles. I feel good about the work the staff has done. They continue to make this process better and more foolproof from year to year. But, you know, there's still a human element to it. We work very hard to make sure those things don't happen. I'm sure there will be a time down the road where something like that will happen again.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, that's a good question. I'm surprised we haven't gotten into it earlier. We do get together in February and do a mock bracketing, seeding and site designation process. Some coverage was gained of it when it took place. It was characterized as preliminary. I want to clarify that there's nothing preliminary about it. It's purely a training and orientation exercise. We try very hard not to begin the process of coming to any conclusions prior to the time we arrive in Indianapolis in early March for our deliberations. There is a lot of basketball to be played from now until the end of the season. And there certainly was a lot to be played from early February until the end of the season. We got together. For the benefit of the new committee members, we went through a full selection, seeding and bracketing exercise. It was abbreviated, but we got to the end of it. And then for the sake of veteran committee members, it's a good refresher course. But it is not intended to be a precursor or a preliminary process to the one that we go through in March. We start fresh in March with our own set of information, our own set of data, and with our own subjective opinions and our own empirical data. That's the only time we get together in person. Now, in conjunction with the selection process, we meet about six times a year. But relative to the selection, seeding and bracketing, we just get together that once in February and then into the exercise. But we talk regularly, and we're in contact electronically. This time of year the committee is pretty well on point. It takes a lot of time, and I'm grateful for the work that the committee does. It's a terrific group.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, not only ESPN, but FOX and CBS and ABC and all of the other ones. We have access to satellite technology. I know that my schedule is probably indicative of what everybody is doing. When I'm not at one of my own men's or women's basketball games, Iowa wrestling meets, I'm at home in front of the TV watching parts of games or all of games. You know, we're looking for critical match-ups. But we also have people going out and actually seeing games live. This is a group that's very devoted to making sure. They give great deference to the importance of the tournament, and it's really a respect for the event that causes them to want to do research, you know, that allows them to have a real on-top-of-the-process perspective when they get to Indianapolis. This group is well-studied, well-rested and ready to go for a big weekend when they get to Indianapolis.

BOB BOWLSBY: Kentucky was the top seed in the Midwest regional. Of course, we were not able to foresee that Marquette and Wisconsin would be the ones that would come through that. There certainly was a situation where there were a lot of Marquette and Wisconsin fans there. I'm sure that the Kentucky faithful, I happen to have had that regional as one of the site coordinators there, and there's no question that there was a predominance of Wisconsin and Marquette fans. And yet from Minneapolis to Madison is five hours or more. Wisconsin is even farther than that -- I mean, Marquette in Milwaukee is even farther than that. While those people traveled well and had the dominant crowd, I don't think that one would qualify as putting a higher-seeded team at a disadvantage because the distance is significant. You know, I'm not sure we could have avoided that wherever we went.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, this is only a personal response to that. We haven't spent a lot of time talking about it as a committee. My feeling that is if you play through four rounds of the tournament and get yourself into that Final Four, you really ought to all be considered to be pretty darn accomplished. As you saw last year, there was a lot of hoopla about Arizona and Kentucky meeting potentially in the semifinals. That was something that didn't come to pass, due largely to the fact that both of them lost before they got there. We have made some changes that I think will be beneficial, but I am not an advocate of reseeding after the regionals. What we've done instead is we have designated, instead of having East, Southeast, Midwest and West regionals, they now are designated by the cities that are in place. So this year they will be just designated as East Rutherford, Atlanta, St. Louis and Phoenix. We don't know who yet is going to be on the top line. So we don't know who's going to be seeded 1, 2, 3, 4 on that top line. We will match up the top seeds in each of those regionals. The top seed in one regional, the regional that has the first seed, will be paired against the fourth No. 1 seed, whatever regional they're in, and likewise 2 and 3 will be paired against one another. The reason for seeding obviously is to keep the best teams apart as far into the tournament as we can. So this I think will give us the best chance for those match-ups in the Final Four, but it certainly isn't going to guarantee it because you never know if those people are going to make it all the way there.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, there were a number of things. We ended up one year having Cal and Fresno State playing in Memphis, George Mason and Maryland playing in Boise. We had several circumstances where teams from the east went west for the first and second rounds, then stayed out there for the regional, missing, you know, a week and a half or two weeks of classes. We just really got to the point where we said, "You know, these things are done on very short notice. Fans can't get reasonably priced airline tickets to fly halfway across the United States to watch their teams play. Some of it had to do with crowds. But more deference to the families of the players and the students that they go to school with and the fans of those people. We just felt like in the interest of missed class time, the interest of being able to follow your team, we wanted to keep people as close to home as we possibly can. It's not flawless. We still end up having to send people way out of their region occasionally, but we're doing much less of it now than we were three years ago. As I said earlier, 50% of the teams in the tournament are staying in their time zone or within one time zone of their home location. So it's an enormous improvement to what it was before in terms of, as I said, missed class time, fans being able to travel, and obviously it's made a big difference in ticket sales, as well. But that third one was certainly not primary in our consideration.

BOB BOWLSBY: It sounds to me like you might have a specific school in mind.

BOB BOWLSBY: As we know, two out of three games are decided in favor of the home team. That's something that we have to take into consideration. I think the scenario you described is a legitimate one that we have to deal with. Typically the last three or four teams into the tournament, you have some people that have had real good seasons and probably are above 20 wins, maybe are not from one of the higher-rated conferences, but it's clear they've had a great season. Then we've got some people that are from the higher-rated conferences that may have finished fourth or fifth or sixth in that conference. We've got this group of eight, and they're vying for three spots. We have to take all of those kinds of things into consideration. But those are excruciatingly difficult to try and differentiate among those eight teams. That's what I said at the early stages of this, of the call. The RPI is not a very good method of discriminating against those eight schools. There are lots better methods of doing that. And what we do is get down to crunching and trying to look for ways to differentiate among those two schools that you just described. It is enormously difficult. The worst part of the selection, seeding and bracketing process, without question, is determining who gets into those last three or four spots and who are the three or four institutions that get left out. And it is very typically just exactly what you described: trying to identify something about the team that gets in that is different from the team that gets left out. It's exactly the kinds of things that you described that we have to rely upon. When you get right down to the end of this thing, you can't fly a piece of paper in between the credentials of one and the credentials of the other. It's very difficult.

BOB BOWLSBY: Yes, I'd be happy to. It's a good question. I would draw your attention to I think it was the tournament three years ago, it may have been four years ago, Cincinnati had come in with a terrific year. They had Kenyon Martin hurt with a season-ending injury right before the tournament. Their seeding was affected by that obviously because they weren't the same team without Kenyon Martin. As I recall, they went from a one seed to a two seed. It was controversial at the time. We certainly take into account situations where injuries have occurred. If a certain player was out for two, three, four games, and a team was 1-3 during that time and had won four out of every five games at other times, those are things we're going to take into consideration. When I talked about the conference surveillance process, that's something that that person that has that league is expected to know. Looks to me like Institution X had a tough stretch here in January. The response will be, "Yes, that's when Player Y was out. He was injured or could have been a suspension." There are a lot of reasons why players aren't available to play at certain times. We take into account injuries, we take into account suspensions, we take into account situations where a coach may have missed a game for one reason or another. There have been some notable situations like that. Those are all elements that we take into consideration. Now, how you value those things probably varies a little bit between and among committee members. We have to sit down and hash our way through that because, you know, some may think it's a very important factor, and others may think it's not particularly important. So, yeah, that's where some of the subjectivity comes into it. But, yes, we take that into consideration, whatever we have available to us.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, to be honest, I haven't thought about it. It's probably something that we're going to have to talk about. As you know, we try and avoid having institutions play places where they have played three or more games during the course of the year. It could be a factor. But I wouldn't presuppose the consideration of the committee on it. I just think we'd have to talk about it and try and get to the bottom of it. To tell you the truth, I just haven't thought about it very much. But it's probably a factor.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, I think those are a lot tougher. The ones that jump out at us are where there's clear missed time, you know, several games or something that is clearly a significant injury. I think the one you identified is a tough one. Gee, we got a person that is injured, didn't play very well, played well below his season statistics, obviously didn't make the contribution that has consistently been made, but did play. Those are difficult. I don't think there is a clear answer I could give you on that. I'm not trying to beat around the bush on it. But in all honesty, those are the kinds of things we have to work our way through on a situation-by-situation basis. I think we do so with consistency, but I also would be less than honest if I didn't tell you it's more art than science. There isn't sort of an empirical template that says this is cut and dried, this is how it works. We just have to deal with each element on its own merit.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, seems to me we have more teams under surveillance than we've had in previous years. I think there are a lot of teams out there that can play, and I think there are a lot of players out there that can play. I think you're seeing the impact of 13 scholarships in a lot of different ways. If you just look at the ACC and the Big-10, the Big East, the Big-12, some of those conferences, at 15 scholarships, there's a couple hundred kids that are sitting on the bench at major programs who are instead playing at institutions all over the country. There are just a lot of good players out there at all levels. I think it makes for great competition. I think it's one of the things that makes the NCAA tournament an outstanding event. And I happen to really enjoy the element of the tournament that says you're going to take the 31 automatic qualifiers, regardless of where they come from, and then the 34 best at-larges. I think it adds an element of excitement that is really unparalleled in any other form of sport. But I just think there are a lot of very good teams out there, and I think on any given day, there are a lot of teams that are not as highly touted that can certainly play with some of the so-called big boys.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, it depends on how much they've struggled. The last 10 games are very important. What we don't want to do is we don't want to put a lot more emphasis on Game 1 of the conference tournament than we put on Game Last in the regular season. I think there's always a temptation to have a mind's eye image of a team based upon their last outing. And I think we always have to be very careful of that to make sure that we don't fall into that trap. Now, having said that, our task is to try and find the teams, the 34 teams, that are the best teams at the end of the year. Some of that's based upon their body of work throughout the year. But many times the team that gets in versus the team that stays out is based upon how they've done in some measure those last 10 games. If you're 5-5 your last 10 games, and somebody else in the pool of eight that I described earlier is 8-2, that's a fairly compelling thing. Now, it depends on who your 5-5 is against, and it depends on who their 8-2 is against. But the last 10 games is an important criteria for us, and I think in the minds of many committee members is one of the more important factors.

BOB BOWLSBY: Well, I think you have to ask the question: Why? What's going on with that basketball team that allows them to play great at times and then play very poorly at times? Presumably if you have some big wins but not very many wins, you're pretty up and down. You wonder why that is. Now, maybe it comes back to injuries. Maybe it comes back to chemistry. It could be attributable to a lot of different things. But that's why I don't think you can place a lot of emphasis just on one criteria. I think you have to employ a number of different elements in order to get a complete picture of what it is that team's record represents.

BOB BOWLSBY: I need to think about that one a little bit. But I would say that once you get to the conference tournament, you're going to play who you're going to play. You know, while I guess someone could suggest that, gee, the weakest teams in the league are not in there, so somebody might be able to get a win against them that might not be able to get a win against a little better team, I suppose that could be argued. If you compare it to the regular season, I would see it being a less important factor in the tournament than it is in the regular season. When we see conferences that have three or four no-plays or several one-plays, I think we have to look at those very carefully because those have a lot to do with your conference record. I think if all the teams aren't in the conference tournament, that's probably less a factor. But, you know, I suppose there could be a situation where it came into play.

BOB BOWLSBY: Yeah, I think that's right. There is an element of self-fulfilling prophecy with regard to, you know, once you get into the conference and you're playing teams with a higher RPI and win or lose it's a little tougher to have your RPI go down. And we take that into consideration. We obviously get information ranking the conferences 1 through 31. We refer to that occasionally. It's among the body of information that we have available to us. I don't know that it ever comes into play where we say, "Here is the highest ranked conference, they need to get the most in. Here is the second ranked, they need to get the next highest number in." It certainly doesn't work that way. I think you have to be careful because that's sort of a distilled version of the RPI. I mean, when you aggregate all those things, then try and put them in some sort of chronological order, I think you take a blunt object and you try and ascribe precision to it. It's a mistake to use the RPI as a precision instrument. It is not a precision instrument. It's a blunt instrument. And it's pretty good for coming up with a chronological order of some sort for 320 teams, but it's not very good for discrimination among a small group of teams. Some of the elements of the RPI are magnified when you start to aggregate them and rank the conferences. I think you have to be real careful how you use that. I think we are careful how we use that.

BOB BOWLSBY: I think when teams, Gonzaga may be a good example, they played a good pre-season schedule, they have success against it, then they get against their league and they move through with a lot of consecutive victories. They may show up in the poles higher than what they show up in other measures of their effectiveness. It is a challenge for us, there isn't any doubt about it. But I think that's why you have to watch those teams play in person and why you have to see as much tape on them as you can. I don't think there's any question, there are a lot of teams that are so-called mid majors. That's not how the committee refers to them, but that's how most of the media refers to them and a lot of the fans refer to them. There are a lot of those people that can really play. They are a seriously bad draw for anybody in the tournament. There's a lot of it that is just nothing more than hard work and watching a lot of tape and trying to make sure you know what they're about.

BOB BOWLSBY: The answer is on most of them we can take them into full consideration. I would be less than honest if I didn't tell you that it gets pretty tough with regard to those last couple or three. Usually we are working in a situation where we have a number of "if then" type scenarios where we have contingent outcomes. It's a real challenge on Sunday. I think I probably will feel that in an acute way this year because I'll be the one that has to go out and answer the questions on it once the seeding and bracketing is done. Many times, because those tournaments are getting over so late, we are working hard in the last four hours before the selection show to try and put everything in place. It is very difficult. We've had to work till the 11th hour a number of times in order to get it accomplished. But we make sure that we don't overlook things. In fact, interestingly enough, the BYU mistake last year didn't happen as a result of hurrying at the end. It actually happened earlier, and we had a little more time last year than we've had in some previous years. But the Saturday and early Sunday completion of the tournaments really aren't a problem for us. But those ones on Sunday afternoon can be a challenge, depending on who's in. If it's teams that have led the league all year and we know about where they fall, where we want to seed them, how you want to put it together, sometimes it's not a problem. But there are those situations, and my institution was involved in one a couple years ago where we were playing in the championship game of the Big-10 tournament, and the only way we were going to get in the NCAA tournament was to win the tournament. We had to have a scenario if Iowa won, of course I was out of the room, so I didn't know what that scenario was, but we also had to have a scenario if Indiana won. It happens. Those games are played where they're played and whether they're played. We just make the best of it.