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NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCEFebruary 10, 2009Mike SliveDAVE WORLOCK: Good afternoon, everyone. Welcome to this afternoon's teleconference with Mike Slive, commissioner of the Southeastern Conference, and chair of the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Committee. We want to thank you all for your participation. Commissioner Slive, before we take our first question, please talk for a moment about the committee's meeting in Indianapolis that takes place later this week. MIKE SLIVE: Thank you, David. Good afternoon, everyone. Thanks for being on the call with us today. Let me begin by saying that it is a sincere privilege for me to chair the Men's Basketball Committee and to represent my nine committed colleagues. All of us are committed to this championship and to provide student-athletes, coaches, institutions, our friends in the media and fans with the best possible experience from the first tip of the opening round through the playing of one shining moment late Monday night, April 6th, at Ford Field in Detroit. Tomorrow in Indianapolis the process continues for us with our selection orientation meeting, a two-day session, during which we discuss matters related to the administration of the championship, review all 330 teams eligible for the tournament, and once again go over the selection, seeding and bracketing process through a condensed exercise. The committee has one new starter, if you will, on our team. That's Mike Babinski of Xavier University. Mike is truly an excellent addition to the committee. The rest of us have been through it before, and hopefully that will be a benefit, even with this season taking on its unique characteristics, as all seasons do. This week's meeting, like the meeting we had in mid January at the NCAA convention, assures that we are completely prepared when we convene in March to select, seed and bracket this year's field. We recognize that this year, perhaps more than ever before, there is a debate across the country about which conference is the best or which conference is the strongest. This debate leads to the question du jour, and that is: How many teams can be selected at-large from any one conference? The answer is: However many of these teams are deemed to be among the best 34 teams in the country. While the committee recognizes the value of media and fans and engaging in such discussions, it's a good time to remind everyone that conference affiliation carries no weight when discussing the merits of a team receiving at-large consideration. Each team is judged independently, and its entire body of work will be thoroughly evaluated. The fact that a number of teams from one league are already in the field does not help nor hurt another team's chances of receiving a bid. Speculating on any one team's chances of making or not making the field, or where a team will be seeded if it makes the field at-large, or as an automatic qualifier, makes for good conversation, reading and debate, but is not productive for the committee with so many games yet to play. There are over 5,000 games in a season and over 1500 yet to play. In terms of selection, it's the committee's job to pick the best of the best as at-large entries in the field. I thought you might like to do a little math with me here. So here goes. There are 343 Division I institutions, of which 330 are eligible this year, of which 31 will be automatic qualifiers. So there are 299 teams eligible for at-large bids. Using the number of automatics, the 34, as a numerator, and 299 as a denominator, that means about 11% of these teams eligible will be selected as at-large entries. That's 1 in 9. So as we have said again and again, for me and I think for the committee it's 'three Ws and an H': Who you played, the quality of competition; where you played, on the road, neutral sites; with whom did you play, was everyone healthy, available on either team; and how you played, talking about winning, and there's always discussion about what is a good loss. So in the final analysis, with this in mind, our goal is to select the 34 best teams, seed the 65-team field 1 to 65, and then bracket the teams so we have a geographically and competitively balanced national tournament. Finally, we recognize that several members of the media, maybe some of you on the call, and some conference office personnel, will be at the NCAA headquarters at the end of this week to take part in a mock selection exercise, doing exactly what the committee does. This is the third consecutive year these sessions have been held. We wish all as participants the best of luck. We are confident that those participating will find the seminars meaningful and informative, and hopefully have some fun as well. For those of you who have not had the opportunity to do that, we hope that you will. You can follow up with any member of the NCAA basketball staff. Thank you, David. DAVE WORLOCK: Thank you, commissioner. We can now turn it over to the callers and begin the question and answer session of today's teleconference. Q. Commissioner Slive, the economy is a big topic right now. As far as where you place teams, will you factor that in when you do the bracketing? MIKE SLIVE: Well, you know, the bracketing principles are designed, and have been designed for several years, to place teams as geographically close to where they are as possible. We are certainly sensitive to the economic times, and we will certainly think about those issues as we go. But we think that the bracketing principles that are in place deal with that issue. We don't think we'll compromise those provisions. Q. Those principles I think allow for the top five seeds to be protected, but then you can have a number seven seed going from the west to East Coast. That's still possible, right? MIKE SLIVE: The top five lines we protect for the first round. But, as you know, in the bracketing principles, we will place teams geographically to the region and then ultimately to the first and second round, but we can only protect through the first and second round. The goal ultimately is to have a nationally competitive and geographically spread national tournament. So to the extent that we can stay with the principles, we will, in order to accomplish that. But we are obviously sensitive to the economic issues. Q. Related to the situation of how many teams from a conference, et cetera, et cetera, you have a situation this year where you have at least one and maybe two ultra- competitive leagues, deep, et cetera, and a couple of teams in those leagues that have really skidded against really high-level competition. Do those loom as challenging teams to look at or do you perhaps have to use a different measure in some way with those teams? MIKE SLIVE: We look at each team, we look at the body of work of each team. We have a tremendous amount of data for each team. I think the way I really only can answer that is each team's body of work is what, in fact, will determine whether or not that team is eligible to be selected as an at-large team. There's one automatic qualifier from a conference. After that, really the 299 teams are viewed independently. There's always talk about conferences. That's why I used my introductory remarks to talk about that. For the committee, it's about teams, it's really not about conferences. That's why there's no limit, there's no artificial limit from any conference. There are no artificial constraints with regard to teams. I hope I answered it. Q. I wasn't specifically talking about the number of teams that would come out of those leagues; just the fact that some of those teams go through, as you know, a terrifically hard stretch where they may not do much in the way of wins, but whether somehow there's sort of credit given for that type of schedule. MIKE SLIVE: Well, I think the answer probably is simply to say that we look at the entire body of work, the entire season. One of the reasons that we don't speculate on teams right now is because we still have a long way to go. I don't think there's any one game, any two games necessarily standing alone, it's the whole body of work. One of the things that gets lost a little bit I think in some of these discussions is it's never just looking at one team standing alone; it's always looking at teams in comparison to other teams. The goal then is to find the best 34 teams. So obviously a team can have different levels of success at different times of the season. But the reality is we look at the whole season and the conference games, the non-conference games, and decide whether or not that team is one of the best 34 teams in the country. Q. I'm coming at this from the other end. The SEC is not having one of its strongest years. I'm wondering how that might impact a modest conference RPI and a losing record against ranked teams, how that might impact the number of bids that the SEC gets. MIKE SLIVE: I should probably dismiss myself from the call here because I'm not going to be involved in any discussion about the SEC. But the committee is not going to consider conference RPIs. It will not be a factor. It's not going to be a part of the nitty-gritty. It's not going to be on the team sheet. It's not going to be available in the room. I think, again, the emphasis here is on what a team has done or not done to earn a slot as one of the top 34 teams in the country. Q. How important is the homestretch for any team, how well they do in the last 10 games or so? MIKE SLIVE: I'm glad you asked that because that's an important question. There's always been discussion about the last 12 games. The importance of the last 12 games can vary from committee member to committee member. But I think the important thing here, and I think I speak for all my colleagues on this, you have to look at the entire year. You have to drill down very, very carefully in what the last 12 games represent, particularly when in conference schedules they're not playing home and home. A team could have a terrific record and maybe play a lesser group of teams at the end of the year. Another team could have a poor one-loss record but play the higher-ranked teams at that time of year. So the quality of competition is a point of consideration for us. And we have to be very careful. I think it's important to see how a team is playing at that time as we enter into the tournament. But we don't want to lose sight of the fact that it's really not the entire season. We're only talking about, you know, the last 1500 games, and there's been over 5,000 games played. At least from my perspective, the last 12 games can't outweigh what a team did, particularly if it was successful earlier in the year. Q. How much of a factor is a close win against a team that maybe people expected them to beat more soundly? You hear a lot about a good loss. Is there such a thing as a bad win? MIKE SLIVE: If you ask a coach, there's probably no such thing as a bad win. But a win is a win. I think close losses are something that have been in the lexicon for some time. The committee will look carefully at the circumstances in a close game, you know, whether or not there was anything untoward in terms of a controversial call or something. But by and large, you know, a loss is a loss. But there is an important element of subjectivity and perspective that each committee member brings to the conversation. As we all talk about the teams, the quality of their season, their body of work, which includes some games that were very, very close, and maybe a close loss. There may have been an injury, there may have been a controversial call, there may have been a three-quarter court last-second shot. All of that weighs into the conversation. But there is no one thing that is going to make a change. But obviously a win is a heck of a lot better than a close loss. Q. I understand that you have a new system this year that can determine plane ticket prices from city to city to try and make this cost-effective for schools. Can you talk a little bit about how big of a role that might play in the bracketing process. MIKE SLIVE: Let me make sure I got the gist of your question. I think in terms of travel, I don't think there's a different cost factor except what's generally situation industry wide for all of us in terms of fewer flights, fewer charters. There will be a challenge in moving so many teams so quickly. We're working and building our program in order to be able to do that. But in terms of pricing, obviously we're subject to what takes place in the market. But it's really the same system as we've had since 2001. The mileage calculation, the cost factors can be seen. But we're going to stick to the bracketing principles. There's an expectation that as people started the season that the bracketing principles would be in place, and we're certainly going to stick with them. That's really a sense of what somebody was asking earlier. We're sensitive and we're concerned, as all Americans are, the impact of the economy, all of our institutions are. But I think our primary obligation is to provide the nation with a national competitive, geographically spread tournament, and that's what we're going to do. Q. I thought there was a new thing that you had this year that would actually calculate the cost for one team, say, from Indianapolis to go to Spokane versus Indianapolis going to Boston. MIKE SLIVE: We've been using the concept of the pods since 2002. All of that has been designed to deal with these issues. We are aware of the cost issues. But I don't think there's been any significantly different change in the process. If I'm not right, I'll have somebody get back to you. Q. Your thoughts on maybe making the play-in game rather than the two lowest-seeded conference champs, where maybe it's the two lowest-seeded at-large teams. MIKE SLIVE: Well, the opening-round game is played between the lowest-seeded teams. Q. Making it at-large teams rather than conference champions. MIKE SLIVE: The way to think about this, at least the way I think about it, is we seed a true seed 1 to 65. In other words, we select the teams, and then the next thing we do is we seed 1 to 65. We then go into the bracket using the true seed list. Sometimes in order to comply with bracket principles, we have to make certain adjustments in the list. But the reality is we're working from a true seed. To do what you suggest would disrupt the true seeding. Now, the way we deal with what we call the fourth quadrant, lines 13 through 16, we form a fourth quadrant committee. We've been doing that for a number of years. In fact, the committee is already in place. So we can give the appropriate due diligence to seeding these last four lines, then assigning teams to the opening-round game. These teams are evaluated just the way we evaluate teams in terms of seeding for the top line. DAVE WORLOCK: Thank you to everyone who participated and listened to today's call. Our next call, Commissioner Slive will be available right from the selection room, on Wednesday, March 11th, at 11 a.m. eastern time. End of FastScripts |
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