We're taking "mid-major" back

I was plowing through my various assigned readings tonight when I got a text message from my buddy John. The message was succinct, but confusing:

"Is Huggins going to a 9-ball tournament after the game?!"

I was perplexed, but then I turned the TV on and flipped over to ESPN, which was showing the Kansas - Kansas State game. And sure enough, there was Bob Huggins, dressed in...uh...well, I'm not sure what it was exactly. A purple shirt with a black vest. He looked like the Black Widow [see accompanying picture...rack 'em!]. (Either that, or he looked like Norman Chad...I'm not sure which is worse.)

Anyway, some items from the last day or so:

- The AP and ESPN polls can't seem to figure out who #1 is. The AP voted Wisconsin #1 overall, while ESPN (voted on by the coaches) made the baffling choice of voting Ohio State #1...despite the fact that Wisconsin BEAT Ohio State in their only head-to-head matchup so far. Apparently that whole head-to-head thing really doesn't matter to the coaches? Suddenly the BCS is starting to make a lot more sense.

Actually, even though we can't eliminate head-to-head from the equation, I can somewhat understand the polls' confusion on this matter. If you look at the tempo-free statistics (provided by basketball stats ace Ken Pomeroy), the two teams are practically even in all areas. They play at basically the same pace (about average amongst Division I teams), they both are ridiculously efficient on offense (with Ohio State holding a slight edge), and they're both ridiculously efficient on defense (with Wisconsin holding the edge). Their predictor numbers are, for all intents and purposes, equal. For the sake of competition, I hope that Wisconsin can take care of business in East Lansing on Tuesday and enter Columbus with just one loss. In what has been a very down year for the Big Ten as a whole, it'd be quite a boost to the conference's overall profile to have two teams engaging in a legitimate #1 vs #2 slugfest on a national stage.

- In the wake of that bizarre spectacle during the All-Star game which saw a severely overweight Charles Barkley easily beat older-than-dirt NBA referee Dick Bavetta in a footrace, Texas Tech head coach Bob Knight weighed in with another classic broadside against over-aged (and overbooked) college officials:

"To have some guy 54 or 55 years old referee six times a week is a real disservice to the kids who are playing," said Knight. "They have plenty of other places they can go. They can go to the NBA, they can go to the NAIA, they can go to junior college, they can go to high school. For years, the NCAA has hidden behind individual employment contractors. I think that's all [baloney]. You say, 'All right, if you're going to work in this league, this is how you're going to work. And if you don't want to work in this league, fine, you've got other leagues to work in.' Check schedules and you'll rarely see where kids play three games a week. These kids are 19, 20 and 21 years old."

Give 'em what-for, Bob! Seriously though, the man has a point. The era of the multi-conference official has given rise to some consistently bad officiating performances --- I invite anyone who doubts this to tune in to any Big Ten game for evidentiary purposes. I do find it remarkable that, despite past research which shows serious problems regarding collegiate officials and gambling, we see practically no leadership from the NCAA in regulating officials.

- That wasn't all that Coach Knight had to say. In what must have been a very eventful Big 12 conference call on Monday, Knight also blasted the current state of affairs which requires NBA prospects to be at least one year removed from high school before they can enter the draft --- with many of the top prospects expected to enter college for one year and then move along.

"Now you can have a kid come to school for a year and play basketball and he doesn't even have to go to class. He certainly doesn't have to go to class the second semester. I'm not exactly positive about the first semester. But he would not have to attend a single class the second semester to play through the whole second semester of basketball. That, I think, has a tremendous effect on the integrity of college sports."

That might be an overly cynical view of some of these players, but at the same time, experience has taught us that such a mentality is more prevalent than not amongst top-level NBA prospects. I do wonder why we haven't seen the NCAA make some sort of policy statement in this area.

Okay, actually I don't wonder that at all. Something tells me that Myles and his thugs are more than happy to keep quiet, watch the money flow in, and then make some vacuous statements about "academic responsibility" among the top universities in Division I.

- I was watching College GameNight tonight, trying to get caught up on the happenings in bracketland, when the conversation on the show turned to the Bracket Buster from this past weekend. Rece Davis asked Digger and Stacey who they thought the most dangerous "mid-major" was going to be once March rolled around. Digger jumped in immediately and said "Winthrop!", while Stacey went with the Nevada Wolf Pack.

Now, hold on a friggin' minute.

I've been involved in bracketology for almost a decade. I've been making mock brackets since I was in high school. I've been involved in a mock tournament committee, which meets every week online and goes through the same procedures that the "real" committee goes through, since the start of the millenium. I have no hesitation in saying that my immersion in bracketology and college basketball in general is on par with even the most die-hard hoops junkies. As such, I get a little irritated when random media commentators start inserting themselves in the process like they've been doing it all their lives (which they haven't).

One of my biggest irritations in this matter is relatively new, and it has to do with this stupid (yes, stupid) urge that every media commentator seems to have with labeling every non-BCS conference team a "mid-major". What was once a term for a very specific type of team has suddenly ballooned into a trendy catch-all catchphrase, and it needs to stop.

Let's examine what a "mid-major" actually is. I can't pin down a specific instance when it was first used, but I recall it coming into vogue in the late 90's, along with bracketology as a whole. The term was originally meant to designate those teams from non-Division I-A football conferences who nonetheless were able to compete with the big boys for at-large tournament berths. The teams who most often were associated with the term "mid-major" tended to be from conferences such as the Missouri Valley Conference, the Horizon League, the Mid-American Conference, the Sun Belt, the Colonial Athletic Association, and the West Coast Conference.

Certain schools who didn't have Division I-A football still didn't quite qualify as "mid-majors", simply because their leagues were relatively prominent in the college basketball landscape. The Atlantic 10 is probably the best example of this. Although none of its members ever was Division I-A in football, the league featured such successful basketball programs as Temple under John Chaney, UMass under John Calipari, St. Joseph's, and Xavier.

Now, however, the term "mid-major" is thrown around like candy. Terming WINTHROP as a mid-major is not only a grievous misstatement, but it's actually a disservice to what Winthrop has accomplished. Winthrop is a small school in Rock Hill, South Carolina, part of the Big South Conference. The Big South Conference doesn't exactly have a history of basketball prowess --- in fact, it's been one of the worst conferences in Division I basketball for years, annually competing with the SWAC and the MEAC for who can have the worst conference RPI. Outside of Winthrop, I don't believe a Big South school has ever been given a seed higher than 14th in the tournament. If anything, Winthrop is a "small" school who has managed to build a remarkable college basketball program. Call them what you want, but for heaven's sake, don't call them a mid-major.

Nevada is another problem child when it comes to the mid-major label. The WAC may be a step below what it was prior to the Mountain West schools breaking off and forming their own conference, but all of its members are still card-carrying "big" schools, complete with Division I-A football programs and financial endowments that far exceed those of the MVC or the CAA.

Aha!, you may be thinking. But what about the MAC and the Sun Belt? Both of those conferences have Division I-A football too! So they're not mid-majors either, right?

Wrong. The Sun Belt and the MAC are exceptions to the rule, much as the Atlantic 10 is an exception. The Sun Belt membership does indeed contain some Division I-A programs, but most have been added within the past 10 years --- with some of the schools only attaining Division I-A status in that time period (e.g., Florida International, Florida Atlantic). Furthermore, almost 40% of the conference's schools don't field Division I-A football programs.

As for the MAC, it's the only conference where the power brokers in Division I-A football have made consistent, repeated efforts to have their Division I-A status revoked...and while I'd never side with the Division I-A powerbrokers, they may have a point. MAC teams such as Eastern Michigan and Ball State routinely fall below the required attendance numbers for Division I-A status. Until the last few years, the MAC has consistently been shut out of bowl agreements, something that the WAC and Mountain West have managed to avoid. The mere presence of the MAC in Division I-A football is an underdog story, that of schools which don't quite have the resources but continue to compete regardless.

All I'm asking for is some forethought and restraint to be practiced by basketball commentators. The concept of the mid-major as it was originally conceived stands for many good things in college basketball. With the success of legitimate mid-majors such as George Mason, Bradley, and Wichita State over the past few years, the concept has the possibility of taking on even greater meanings. When commentators haphazardly assign the term to any team with a chance to make noise in the tournament, however, it cheapens the value of the word and the concepts it embodies.