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NATIONAL COLLEGIATE ATHLETIC ASSOCIATION MEDIA CONFERENCEMarch 11, 2009Mike SliveDAVE WORLOCK: Good morning, everyone. Welcome to today's teleconference with Mike Slive, Commissioner of the Southeastern Conference and Chair of the Division I Men's Basketball Committee. We want to thank everyone for spending the early part of your Wednesday with us as Commissioner Slive and the rest of the committee soon begin the five-day process of selecting, seeding and bracketing teams for the 2009 men's basketball championship. I would now like to welcome Chair Slive. Commissioner, as you prepare for the committee's work in the days ahead, do you have any observations as regular-season play has come to a close? MIKE SLIVE: Thank you, David. Good morning, everyone. I want to first say what an honor it is to sit in this room where the selection, seeding and bracketing process will unfold for my fifth and final year on the committee. Obviously what transpires in this room over the next five days will be the topic of conversations among basketball fans around the world. That attention is a huge part of what makes this championship one of the world's premiere sporting events. I know that my colleagues on the committee feel, as I do, that this is a privilege for us to be here, and we are committed to assembling the best possible brackets for this year's championships. We have put in a great deal of work in advance of this week and are ready to dissect and analyze teams that deserve consideration for selection into this tournament. The conference tournaments determine 30 of the 31 automatic qualifiers and provide a chance for any of the 322 teams in Division I to make the championships. Everyone has a shot of making it to the Dance. It is also a chance for teams to add meaningful wins to what they have already accomplished throughout the season. I emphasize the words 'through the season'. A couple of wins this week can't hurt, but it is certainly important that we look at the entire body of work for a team. Wins in November and December count. Losses in November and December count, just as they do in January, February and March. I commented earlier that the committee has put in the work to be prepared for this week. So have our coaches, whose input through the Regional Advisory Committee is one of the many tools we have to evaluate teams. So have conference offices, who provide us with an incredible amount of useful information that we have had access to throughout the season as part of our conference monitoring program. We will take into consideration every piece of information that we have available and is relevant. That includes injuries and the status of injured players. It includes close losses, quality wins and a wide variety of circumstances that possibly could have affected results. But, again, we are reviewing results from the entire season. Conference tournaments are exciting and serve a purpose. But it is important for the committee to not get so caught up in what a team does this week and overlook what it has done over the course of the last four months. That perspective is essential to right decisions. It is our charge to pick the best 34 at-large teams, regardless of conference affiliation. And that's what we are here to do. I have said it before, and it's worth pointing out again. We look to answers to the three Ws and an H: Who you play, where you play, with whom did you play, and how you played. Who you played: quality of competition. Where you played: was it road, home or neutral? With whom did you play: was everyone available and healthy on either team? And how you played: did you win, or maybe it was a good loss. We will ask and debate these questions a countless number of times in the coming days. And when we have asked them for the final time, we believe we will have the best 34 teams selected to join the 31 automatic qualifiers to make up a geographically and competitively balanced national tournament. If there's one thing that's been obvious about this season, it's that there are a number of quality teams playing. Just looking at the coaches and media polls throughout the season, we have seen a revolving door, not only at the top, but throughout the top 25. What that means is there are many good teams capable of beating other good teams, and that's going to make the tournament as exciting as ever. It's shaping up to be a memorable championship from start to finish. It is also shaping up to be a stressful week for the committee because we have a lot of tough decisions ahead of us. But we're ready. One final but important thought about the economy and its effect on the upcoming championships. These are trying times for all us here, for all of you on the call, and for the millions around the country. There's no safe harbor from the effects of the current financial situation. As we head into this selection weekend, we are reminded of the changes we implemented in 2002, which places teams, to the greatest extent possible, close to their national geographic area. Since that time, most teams and their fans are traveling shorter distances for tournament games. A savings in costs and missed class time. We fully recognize that this is a national championship. Our 330 Division I member institutions are located throughout the country. The committee remains committed to this principle to the extent it does not adversely impact fair competition. All in all, we're energized to get to the road to Detroit. So, Dave, let's get started. DAVE WORLOCK: Thank you, Commissioner Slive. With that, we are now ready for our first question. Q. How do you try to evaluate a team that has lost a key player for a period of time and then he returns for the last couple of games? Do you just look at the last couple games? MIKE SLIVE: I understand the direction of your question. What we are going to do for all teams who have injuries, we will evaluate the team before the injury; we will evaluate the team during the injury; and if a player happens to return, we'll make every effort to evaluate the team at that time. But it's the whole body of work and the quality of the team as it moves towards tournament time. We will continually, throughout the weekend, on any teams that have players that have been injured or who currently get injured, we will maintain constant contact with institutions and the conferences to make sure that we know exactly the current status of the student-athlete at that particular time. Q. You hear a lot that maybe the committee pays more attention to your record against the top 50 than just the RPI number. Is that true? You mentioned conference tournaments do matter. Can a team move up or down in seeding based on a couple of wins or a loss in conference tournaments? MIKE SLIVE: Wins against the top 50 are one of the many criteria that members of the committee look at. As to where in the list of priorities any particular committee member has can vary. But clearly, I can speak for myself here, wins against the top 50 and wins on the road are two very important criteria in analyzing a team. That tells you the ability for a team to have success against quality competition, that the team's going to face quality competition in the tournament. As to the tournament games, Tom O'Connor last year coined a phrase. He said the committee needed to be careful not to engage in 'impulse buying'. A team certainly can help itself with meaningful wins in a tournament. But, again, that's going to be against the context of the entire season. I think we have to be careful that we don't wait a couple of games in such a way that it doesn't provide context in terms of the entire regular season. Q. How much significance do you place in the team's road record when it comes to picking the best 34 at-large? MIKE SLIVE: Again, every member of the committee will evaluate criteria in his or her own way. I do think, from my perspective, that away wins against quality competition certainly is a significant indicator as to the quality of a team, and one that deserves a lot of consideration in the analysis by the committee. Q. Earlier you mentioned the whole body of work, not just counting the wins in November and December. Don't the January, February wins carry just a little bit more weight than those early-season wins? MIKE SLIVE: I think, again, that will be for each committee member to decide how much weight to put on the timing of a game. But the best way to evaluate a team is based on a full body of work, is to think about or give credit for, or if there are losses, to hold teams accountable. Otherwise, in a sense, you're going to have November and December being an exhibition season, and it's not. It's an integral part of the entire season. I think it is important for the committee to consider the teams when they're playing throughout the year. So the games early are important. How a team is playing as we enter into the tournament is also a factor to be considered by the committee. So I think you can do both without diminishing the importance of November and December. Q. There have been some coaches and some media types who have taken note of the fact the committee has just four members with any Division I basketball playing or coaching experience. I wonder what your response would be to someone who might question the credentials of the committee based on it being made up primarily of administrators. MIKE SLIVE: I think what you have is a group of committed, dedicated, knowledgeable, experienced administrators, some of whom have coached, some of whom have created basketball leagues, some of whom have spent their lives in one form or another related to the game, who appreciate the game, who love the game, and know it, and who can bring - by virtue of observation, study and analysis - just what is needed to create the kind of field that makes this tournament great. It's evolved from a small tournament to one of the world's premiere athletic events with these same kinds of people, the same composition of people throughout the country. This year's committee is the same committee we had last year with only one change. I think the world was pretty happy with last year's tournament, with the exception of a few teams who didn't make it. The other thing is that we have access to a lot of people, a lot of expertise, people who have been in the game, people who have coached the game. We get input from 31 coaches from around the country with their regional advisory groups. I can tell you this. If you spend time with any one of us or all 10 of us in this room, you would have no doubt about the level of basketball expertise and knowledge that's going to create this year's tournament. Q. Ohio State beat Miami and Notre Dame early in the year when both teams were considered a lot better than they ended up being. How much of that kind of weighed, how a team is regarded at the time they're played compared to later on? MIKE SLIVE: Well, I think you can understand why it's inappropriate for me to talk about any particular teams. If I understand your question, again, it's important that we understand and analyze the entire season, what took place in the period of time that you mentioned, what took place middle of the season, what took place towards the end of the season. Putting all of that together in a matrix is what's going to give us the kind of information and analysis that we need. I hate to keep going back to the mantra. But the mantra is: It's the full body of work, who was available to both teams in a given game. In my three Ws and an H, we look at that for every team, for every game. Q. I understand you can't comment on a specific team. Does a win that may look good or bad in December, does that change based on the way that team ended up being, that opponent ended up being in the end? MIKE SLIVE: It's really impossible to tell without looking at a particular team and looking at what happened. I don't think there's a rule. There's a tendency to want to try to create a series of axioms that fit into every team's situation. I don't want to avoid your question, but I think it can't be answered any better than the way I've answered it. Sorry. Q. I know your first ballots are due in a few hours. Do you have any guess or if you filled out your ballot, what kind of number are you looking at in terms of the teams you're looking at for that 'under consideration' list? MIKE SLIVE: I filled out my ballot, but I'm not going to share it with you (laughter). Q. When we were there, we had an inordinate amount of 'under consideration' teams. Do you foresee that happening with all the teams on the bubble or do you think it will be whittled down pretty early? MIKE SLIVE: I don't know. This afternoon, you're right, about mid afternoon, we're going to have every member of the committee to submit their initial ballot, as you would say. I would anticipate that we would have more teams at-large than you did and fewer teams under consideration than you did. Q. With the mid-majors, I know you don't want to talk about teams individually, but does the week off, them having played their conference tournament last week, do you think that plays a role that you don't get to see them for eight days? MIKE SLIVE: No, I don't at all. I really don't. When we're here for these five days, we're involved in looking all the teams and thinking about what they've done. We know that not all the mid-major tournaments ended last weekend. They continue on. But I don't think there's any disadvantage whatsoever that a tournament ends early. Q. You mentioned in your opening statement about the economy, road wins, that sort of thing. In this environment, do you look at a schedule that maybe someone changed so they weren't traveling as much, either they couldn't get these games that might help them come tournament time or they just couldn't travel as much? MIKE SLIVE: I think one of the things the committee has to do, we have to take what happened during the season as the basis for our decision making. It would be very hard for us - if I understand your question correctly - to think about the what ifs, or if one team could have done this and didn't do this because of that. Those aren't things that I think we could deal with. When we're looking at the reality of what happened, a couple of things that might be of interest. One is that the revised bracketing policy has been in place since the 2002 tournament and it has made a difference. We've tracked it and it has continuously reduced travel expense drastically. Relatively few teams travel beyond one time zone in the current configuration. Let me stop there. I think that answers your question, or at least attempts to answer your question. I'd be happy if you want to follow up with something else. Q. If a team gets really blown out bad in the process, is that a factor, too, or is it the loss? When a team loses, is the degree to which it loses a factor? If it gets blown out badly in the process, is that taken into consideration? MIKE SLIVE: I think those factors are available to each member of the committee. I think to some degree they play a role. You know, we look at good losses, so obviously the inference is that you would consider bad losses. So I think the answer to your question is we don't take margin of victory as a factor into your calculations. The facts are there. But we do take close losses into account. Q. I'm taking a look at the general principles for selection seeding and bracketing that you guys use. How difficult is it to keep all these things in mind as you're going through the process? Do you have someone that kind of monitors the dos and don'ts, all these complicated things? MIKE SLIVE: Good question. We do it several ways. I'll embarrass somebody here. Greg Shaheen, who works with us in basketball, does a great deal to keep us on course. But we assign to each committee member one of the principles and make sure that we monitor each one as we go. Then the basketball staff, as well, in addition to Greg, are here to help monitor it. Many of the committee members are now veterans. Most of us have been on the committee for some time. We only have one rookie in Mike Bobinski. It's the combination of the staff and it's the combination of some experience on the committee. But it's a balancing act. We just got a lot of eyes on it. But we have been able to track these principles. One of the things that complicates it a little bit is that it's usually Sunday afternoon when we're doing the bracketing and we've been through the selection process, we've been through the seeding process, and we're a couple hours away from going on CBS and announcing the bracket. It's incredibly important that we have everybody on the team, so to speak, making sure they're fulfilling their responsibilities. Q. Is that one of your biggest I wouldn't say fears, but concerns as chair, that something will slip through? I remember a few years ago BYU. MIKE SLIVE: I got a couple things. We have a bracketing mantra. You remember the old saying: 'Remember the Alamo.' Here instead of the Alamo, it's 'Remember BYU' (laughter). Q. You talked about bad losses. I know you can't speak to the other committee members. At what RPI number do you cut it off and say that's not a good loss, a good game, that's a bad loss? MIKE SLIVE: There's two questions there. Let me start with the 'bad loss'. At least the way I look at it is, you got a long season and every team is going to have pluses and minuses. A team can have a lot of wins and some good losses and can have a game where they lost by a large margin. They're probably not unique in that. I think the question really is, a team is expected to play competitively with teams in a similar range. When a team loses to a team it should not have lost to, that's a note. When a team beats a team that is better than that team, that's a notable win and something that we need to keep track of. Again, I don't think there's any particular factor that keeps a team in or any particular factor that keeps a team out. But obviously, when you're looking at the full body of work, you might have a question about a particular game where a team lost in a game that they shouldn't have lost by a large margin. Again, it's really part of the whole. DAVE WORLOCK: Thank you, everyone, for participating on this morning's call. A special thanks to the folks on the West Coast who we understand have to get up bright and early to participate in this call. We appreciate you taking the time to speak to Commissioner Slive as we get ready to begin the selection, seeding and bracketing process. We'll remind you that our next opportunity to speak with Chair Slive is Sunday night at 7 p.m. eastern time. End of FastScripts |
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