This will be an interesting year when comes to March Madness. You can see the writing on the wall and how the NCAA and the powers that be operate.

The PAC 10 is basically dead with the defections to the Big 10 and other schools looking to possibly leave. As a result, West Coast basketball as such is in a bad state if there is no P5 conference comprised of West Coast teams. Enter the Mountain West. I think during March Madness we will see f they are worthy of the ridiculous hype they have been getting all season long. The current group think is that they could get 6 (more) bids to March Madness. This is Madness! Of course who will suffer from this? Mid-Majors and conferences like the A10 and MVC as bids dry up. Factor in the ridiculous NIT rule changes and things only get worse. I think in a cross conference match-up between the A10 and MW that the A10 would do quite well. Of course, when you are a current NCAA and media darling like the MW is, you have no incentive to agree to a conference challenge.

So, it will be interesting to track how these P5 conferences do this March, especially the MW. We know the Big 10 has been awful in the March the past several years. This year will bear watching even closer.

The NCAA proposal regarding NIL and paying athletes is also clearly a way to separate the P5 from the rest of college sports. It will become a self-fulfilling prophecy. Open and blatant paying of athletes will only benefit the large "Rich" programs causing a larger divide. As currently constructed, the proposal would still allow rich schools and "poor" schools to both participate in March Madness, but it will lead to separate divisions at some point if the games end up being blow-outs and uninteresting as people won't watch certain games. Question is if the rich would want to change the rules because they are already paying athletes and are not forced to follow Title IX requirements, which would mean paying other athletes, not just basketball and football players.

Here is an article in USA Today regarding the NCAA Proposal:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/college/2023/12/05/ncaa-athlete-pay-proposal-college-athletics/71811244007/

The NCAA proposal is what politicians call a "trial balloon". Its meant to gauge public and school sentiment, and it would open the door for more $$$ and power grabs.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:

A trial balloon, or kite-flying (used in the UK and elsewhere), is information sent out to the media in order to observe the reaction of an audience.[1] It is used by companies sending out press releases to judge customer reaction, and by politicians who deliberately leak information on a policy change.

The top MWC teams learned how to 'game' the NET through their non-con scheduling. And, most importantly, they WON their non-con games and, for the most part, avoided bad losses. No A10 schools, save Dayton and maybe Richmond, can say the same. Dayton has a very similar profile to a lot of the top tier MW schools. They beat some OK teams (Cincinnati, St. John's, LSU), haven't beat any great teams and don't have any bad (Q3/Q4) losses. As a result, they are right now a 'lock' to be in the tourney.

Richmond, on the other hand, has two 'bad' losses (Q3) and is only 1-3 in Q1 games (Dayton is 3-4). We have two 'bad' losses (a Q3 and a Q4) and we are 0-3 in Q1 games.