Go ahead and try.

Try and explain the NCAA Tournament bracket and the pod system that the selection committee has set up, because if you can, you’ll be the first.

Jim Livengood, the selection committee chairman, couldn’t. He stumbled through a national conference call after the bracket was revealed on television.

Even the most adept college basketball minds can’t grasp it.

‘I don’t understand it,’ Syracuse head coach Jim Boeheim said.

‘I’m still trying to figure it out,’ said Notre Dame coach Mike Brey.

Well, here’s a shot: The pod system is the NCAA’s attempt to keep teams closer to home in the NCAA Tournament.

But only if it were that simple.

Try wading through the evasive words of NCAA officials and the daunting legalese of the NCAA rulebook, and the only obvious observation is a murky collection of rationales.

But at least the collection is somewhat in order.

Lee Fowler, North Carolina State’s director of athletics and the chairman of last year’s selection committee, which instituted the pod system, listed a number of intertwining factors of its creation.

Fans of both NCAA powerhouses and fledglings could watch their favorite teams, arenas could be filled, games could exude electricity and travel could be lessened.

Fowler admitted the almighty dollar — collected through extra fan revenue and cut from travel budgets — was a consideration as well.

Indeed, it’s hard to imagine developing a system as confounding and alienating for any reason besides money.

Explaining the inexplicable

In 2000, the worst-case scenario occurred. Four East Coast teams were sent to Boise, Idaho. Logic said that Maryland, Georgetown, George Mason and Hampton — located in Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia — might as well have played in North Carolina or Tennessee.

The pod system was developed to keep teams closer to home for the first two rounds. While the ‘new’ bracket looks the same as the old one, the system is far more complicated.

Each region continues to consist of 16 teams. But each group of 16 is further broken down into groups of four, which are placed in sites throughout the country.

Rather than groups of eight playing in one locale — as was done prior to 2002 — each group of four could be moved to any of the eight designated NCAA locations.

‘I like it because I think the reasons why it was put in were solid reasons: to keep teams closer to home for the players’ families,’ Pittsburgh coach Ben Howland said. ‘The kids that play for you, their families have a better chance of affording to get there and being able to get there. And then also for the fans of those teams, I just think it’s good.’

Bill Hancock, a spokesman for the NCAA, said the committee begins the selection process by choosing the 65 tournament-bound teams and rating them Nos. 1-65. The committee then identifies the top seeds — Kentucky, Arizona, Oklahoma and Texas this year — and places each in the closest possible venue.

The No. 1 seeds used to be the only ones who received regional favoritism.

Also, previously the top seeds were rated Nos. 1-4, with the top seed given an easier draw. In the pod system, all four are treated the same.

‘We don’t make a specification between the seeds, we have four No. 1 seeds,’ Hancock said. ‘We look at Arizona. There’s nothing real close to them, put them aside. Now we go to Oklahoma, they’ll play in Oklahoma City.’

Once the No. 1 seeds are chosen and placed at a location, the NCAA scans the lesser seeds for teams that are close to that location. So although Kentucky is considered the tournament’s top team, Texas is playing the winner of the play-in game. Kentucky, placed in Nashville, Tenn., takes on IUPUI — which is only a short drive to Nashville.

In previous years, the top-ranked team faced the winner of the play-in game.

With the top-four teams taken care of, the committee selects the next four best teams. These teams are also placed as close to their schools as possible.

‘We feel that if anyone should be rewarded, it’s the teams that earn it during the regular season,’ Fowler said.

But the process doesn’t always reward the best teams. Duke, a No. 3 seed, received no preferential treatment, getting shipped to Salt Lake City to play Colorado State.

‘We’re trying to make sure teams on the top five lines aren’t at a disadvantage,’ Livengood said. ‘We’re trying to keep everyone closer to home, but practically you can’t do that.’

The committee reserves the right to send a team such as Duke — which had no nearby location but a number closer than Utah — out of its area if a top-five seed is close to a first-round location.

‘As long as you’re a top seed, you can’t be punished,’ Fowler said. ‘You start with the high seeds. The teams in the middle still do a lot of traveling.’

Ex-Cuses

Boeheim has been one of the pod systems biggest opponents, mostly because he can’t understand it.

But Boeheim won’t complain about Syracuse’s draw this year.

The Orangemen and Pittsburgh were the two most dominant Northeast teams, so both will start in Boston.

But Pittsburgh, which won the Big East championship, was shipped to the Midwest Region, the same bracket as No. 1 Kentucky. The Panthers will head to Minneapolis for the third and fourth rounds.

Syracuse, meanwhile, lost in the Big East tournament semifinals. But the committee gift-wrapped two rounds of play in the home-court environment of Albany.

Why? No. 2 Florida was sent to the South and No. 2 Kansas to the West. The committee must then have decided to send Pittsburgh, rather than No. 2 Wake Forest, to the Midwest because Wake stayed in the East. This means the committee ranked Wake Forest higher than Pittsburgh, despite the fact that many believed the Panthers would contend for a No. 1 seed.

Pittsburgh’s move to the Midwest left the East open for Syracuse.

Hit or miss

The effectiveness of the pod system depends on whose goals are taken into account.

‘I don’t think (I’d change anything from last year),’ Fowler said. ‘It was probably about 50-50. Some coaches liked it. Some didn’t. The coaches were very concerned that someone would get an advantage.’

Clearly some teams will. Oklahoma, Florida and Notre Dame play games in their home states, but members of the committee see no problems with that because they are all top-five seeds.

‘It’s very subjective, and there’s a lot of debate about it,’ Boston College head coach Al Skinner said. ‘But I do believe that you can have a sizeable advantage when the higher seed is playing at home.’

Other coaches take more issue when a lower seed — placed in a pod because of location — gets an advantage over a higher seed.

Colorado State has such an advantage over Duke, although Fowler contends people would cheer for CSU anywhere because they are underdogs. Weber State, in Spokane, Wash., has a similar advantage over Dayton, while Auburn, in Tampa, Fla., has a location advantage over St. Joseph’s.

‘Should a higher seed have a disadvantage? Absolutely not,’ Mississippi State head coach Rick Stansbury told reporters last year, after his No. 3 Mississippi State team lost to No. 6 Texas in Dallas. ‘Let’s make sure everybody has the same level playing field to continue to play on. And that absolutely hasn’t happened around the country.’

Livengood contends the system is fine and the committee should not be concerned with matchups beyond the first round.

‘We don’t try to look ahead. The committee can’t predict who might win,” Livengood said. ‘I think the committee would do a tremendous disservice if we did try to look ahead.”

In 2000, the year of the Boise debacle, Fowler said 49 teams were sent out of their regions. Last year, Fowler said the number was reduced to 31. Although the NCAA has not released an official number, it appears the number is 32 this year.

Tickets sold during the first two rounds of last year’s tournament increased. The NCAA said ticket sales jumped 15 percent, with arenas selling 96 percent of tickets in the first two rounds (domed stadiums were not included in this statistic). Sales for the third and fourth rounds also jumped from 85 percent to 97.

‘Year in, year out, somebody gripes about it,’ Fowler said. ‘You’re never going to make everyone happy.’

Published on March 20, 2003 at 12:00 pm