New Ivy League postseason tournament solves a problem that doesn't exist
The Ivy League has always prided itself on its distance from the herd.
Thought to be a breeding ground for leaders and innovators, the Ivies are a generally visionary bunch with a reputation for sensibility, and for years that mindset has carried over to athletics, as well.
It's one of the reasons the league recently became the first to ban full-contact football practices, and — to a significantly less serious degree — that spirit is also seen in the format of its in-conference basketball schedule, with games played on Friday and Saturday nights so as to be as minimally disruptive as possible to the players' academic obligations.
But on Thursday, the Ivy League did an uncharacteristic thing when it added a conference basketball tournament starting next season, ending a half-century run without one. It's a move that brings the Ivies into alignment with the rest of college basketball, but it does so at the expense of the country's most pragmatic method of deciding a league's NCAA tournament representative.
To be fair, the Ivy League's version of a conference tournament will be decidedly less superfluous than many others around the NCAA. With only the top four of the league's eight teams invited to participate, the tournament won't resemble the all-inclusive events hosted by most conferences, effectively weeding the bottom feeders out so the favorites don't have to.
At the least, that caveat will keep the Ivy League and the NCAA from ending up with a Holy Cross situation on its hands. But even so, the addition of any conference tournament is the perfect example of solving a problem that doesn't exist.
I've long been of the opinion that conference tournaments are a needless extension of an already-protracted regular season, just as the proliferation of early-season tournaments does wrong by the originals in Maui, Anchorage and elsewhere, watering down virtually every field for the sake of adding another to the mix.
The fact is that while everyone loves a Cinderella story in the moment, it's arbitrary and blatantly unfair to force a regular-season champion to earn its way into the field of 68 over the course of a weekend after an entire season spent doing just that. That's not an issue in the NCAA's elite leagues or in high-end mid-major conferences like the Atlantic 10, but it puts an undue burden on the top performers in the Ivy League, Patriot League and any number of one-bid conferences across the nation.
Like those found in the Atlantic Sun and the WAC, the Ivy League's eight-team setup is already perfect for deciding a league champion without the need for a tournament. Each team plays every other team twice in conference play — once at home and once away — allowing the entire league to be judged on the same criteria.
Last week, the A-Sun almost saw a fever dream come true when Stetson nearly put North Florida in the NCAA tournament despite UNF losing in the conference tournament semifinal. In a just world, top-seeded UNF would have already been in the field by virtue of its 10-4 regular-season record in league play — and by that logic, tournament champ Florida Gulf Coast should consider itself lucky — but these and other headaches could be avoided by simply doing what makes sense.
In a statement Thursday, Ivy League executive director Robin Harris said the new tournament format will allow the league to "preserve the significance of the regular season." But the best way to accomplish that goal is to do what the league has always done and not hold a conference tournament at all, regardless of the size of the field.
Had a four-team tournament been in effect this year, we'd have seen 6-8 Harvard fighting for the same postseason berth as 13-1 Yale — a team that had truly earned its way back into the Big Dance after a 54-year absence. So while the Ivy League's latest development might someday make it easier for Dartmouth or Columbia to reach the NCAA tournament for the first time since before the Nixon administration, it comes at the expense of a charming, long-standing tradition that's befitting of the league itself.
It may not be the most entertaining way of deciding a champion, but it's certainly the most prudent. And from the Ivy League, especially, that kind of tact and foresight is the least we should expect.
You can follow Sam Gardner on Twitter or email him at samgardnerfox@gmail.com.
