Of all the NCAA Tournament debates over the years, there is one few can argue: the expansion of the tourney to 64 teams for 1985 is a landmark moment in the history of college basketball.
The tourney’s growth combined with a fledgling cable network called ESPN to propel college basketball to a golden era in the 1980s, but also into what it became after that. The term ‘bracketology’ alone is a symbol of the tourney’s rise since then; there was no such thing before the 64-team tournament.
I was fortunate to come to the sport as a youth shortly after that expansion. The first year watching college basketball for me was 1986-87. (I was nine years old) The first NCAA Tournament I watched was that 1987 tourney.
I remember viewing CBS’s selection show that year and being thoroughly intrigued. It was fascinating that schools like Middle Tennessee State, San Diego (not San Diego State-just San Diego) and Xavier could be in a national tournament with football heavies like the LSUs and Michigans and basketball powers like Georgetown and UNLV that were on CBS regularly. I clipped the bracket out of my grandparents’ newspaper the next day. Later that week, watching the first day of that year’s tournament on ESPN and seeing schools like New Orleans and Xavier not just play well but winning games against bigger schools, and then the next day Austin Peay and Southwest Missouri State did the same-I was hooked.
Bracketology was still more than ten years from becoming a big deal at that time, but from that first time watching the draw announced, the cut line of who got in and who didn’t captivated me. (CBS referred to such teams as “on the fence” in those years.) Who gets in and who doesn’t was much more interesting than arguing over a team’s seed. There’s not much difference between a 2 and a 3 seed. There is a difference between a 12 seed and the NIT. Though not making bracket projections, I would keep tabs of and often had strong opinions of the proverbial “bubble,” from grade school, through high school and into college. The latter is when this thing called the internet was coming into popularity, and an affable guy named Joe Lunardi was projecting the NCAA Tournament field throughout the season. (Affable, and very accessible-he was kind enough to respond to emails asking about certain teams’ chances to make the field regularly back then, well before Twitter made people like him so easy to reach.)
Since its early incarnations from people like Lunardi, Scott (Buzz) King (you may not have heard of him, but you should-he’s projected the field since 1992) and others, bracketology has exploded over the last 20 years, and hundreds make regular NCAA Tournament projections now. The selection process has never been more scrutinized, and the NCAA has even made some efforts in recent years to shed a little more light on it, giving us mock selection exercises with media, seed lists and even telling us the first teams left out of the field.
While bracketology has proven immensely popular in recent years (witness how it dominates ESPN’s coverage), it often has felt like once a tourney field is selected, everything so many have been following fervently for months is quickly forgotten. It felt like a topic begging for some historical perspective.
The initial goal was modest, to create a list of the biggest snubs in tourney history, documenting the most notable teams left out in this writer’s (fairly long) time of watching the tourney. After doing some preliminary research and looking at notes made on selections from tourneys past, though, it expanded to a whole lot more.
The decision was made to reflect on, recall and examine the “bubble” for every year since 1985, the first year when the tourney expanded to 64. Who just slipped into the tourney, who was just left out, and some of the whys. There may be some thoughts on where the committee went right or wrong, and we look back on some of the stories from the aftermaths of Selection Sundays past, too.
The result was the lengthy history project that will be posted here over the next couple weeks before Selection Sunday 2020. It was a lot of fun to look back on and research. It is more research paper than breezy internet read, certainly for college hoops diehards, but… one beauty of the internet is that it provides room for writing of all lengths and sizes.
It’s hard to boil down the “bubble” each year to several paragraphs, but that was the attempt here. Truth is, it’s a topic one could write a book about. Maybe someday they will. (Some might think this is longer than a book if they read it) There is endless information to use in comparing teams, and ample stories to tell, even acknowledging that getting selection committee members to discuss their choices on record will likely never be some of them.
In the meantime, here is one person’s review and thoughts on NCAA Tournament at-large ins and outs year-by-year for the past 35 years. Each recap includes the ‘Last in’, a list of the last teams in the field by seeding, the most practical since seed lists were not released until the last decade. At minimum it was the last five at-large selections by seed, most of the time it ended up being any at-large team seeded 10th or lower. Also listed are teams ‘Left out.’ This is essentially a consensus of which teams were closest to the field but did not make it in a given year. Sources included CBS and ESPN selection shows of the past, newspaper articles, bracketology projections and reviews of them, as well as the author’s evaluation then or in hindsight.
Also detailed is the number of multi-bid conferences each year. While this may seem like a random number of little significance, it actually tells a lot about how the committee has handled later at-large selections over the years. We’d encourage one to read on and see.
Obviously the further one goes back, the harder some information is to find, specifically references to RPI and numerical data. Thus, our recaps of the earlier years tended to have less in numbers (but probably more in colorful stories). RPI data became more available as the 1990s went on and since then, so there is often more number citation in more recent years.
A couple more things. Number one, this writer makes no apologies: I am a believer in those schools and leagues outside the so-called “power” conferences. The “mid-majors”, if one uses that term. Those teams helped draw me into the tournament, and frankly they draw so many others in too; it’s not the seventh-place team from the ACC that piques interest in bracket pools. More importantly, though, I’ve believed for a long time, and Joe Lunardi has documented it too, that when those lesser-known schools receive at-large bids, they make good use of them. Often better than those middling majors. The goal here was to be fair and objective while also including some insight, but if it feels like there is a slight slant in favor of those teams you don’t hear as much about on a daily basis…so be it.
Also, a variety of sources were used in putting this together. Sports Reference’s college basketball site https://www.sports-reference.com/cbb/ is an indispensable online source for so much good information. Jerry Palm’s http://www.collegerpi.com archive is outstanding (and still available). Warren Nolan’s website http://www.warrennolan.com provides excellent ratings information as well. The NCAA also has a host of historical data on the RPI and new NET ranking at https://extra.ncaa.org/solutions/rpi/SitePages/Home.aspx.
Newspapers.com provides access to a tremendous archive of newspaper stories. The NCAA’s Final Four records book was very helpful. The author’s own collection of Blue Ribbon Yearbooks (every one of them from the beginning), Street & Smith’s and Sporting News annuals, Sports Illustrated magazines and newspapers also came in handy, as well as personal VHS tapes and DVDs of past CBS and ESPN NCAA Tournament selection shows. A detailed bibliography is also due for this exercise. Information sources were cited when easily possible. RPI data was typically taken from the NCAA’s website archive in early years, from collegerpi.com in the mid-90s into the early 2000s, then from the NCAA’s archive again. Story sources were noted when specific, while often times post-selection quotes were from selection shows or were quoted in multiple stories, including from the Associated Press wire.
