When Jay Bilas began covering college basketball for ESPN in 1995, the sport looked completely different than it does today. Back then, players getting paid millions of dollars would’ve triggered a major investigation, Kansas and Oklahoma were still in the same conference, and the First Four—the modern March Madness addendum that gives bubble teams a chance to play their way into the tournament’s field of 64—didn’t yet exist.
Still, Bilas’s love of the sport has never waned, even as he gets roped into more and more conversations with aging hoops fans about how great and pure college basketball used to be. At the end of the day, the NCAA Tournament is still the NCAA Tournament—one of, if not the, most entertaining stretches on the national sports calendar. This year, there’s no shortage of intrigue surrounding the men’s tourney. Can the Southeastern Conference, which sent a record 14 teams to the big dance, actually produce the winner? Is this the year that Bilas’ alma mater Duke cuts down the nets for the sixth time? If so, the Blue Devils would pull into a tie with two-time defending champion UConn—and despised rivals North Carolina, whose inclusion in the tournament was the most controversial decision made by the committee—on the all-time list. And, perhaps most importantly for the degenerate population, which team of pimple-faced youngsters from a school that you’d previously never heard of has the best chance of making you a bunch of money this month?
Bilas says he never skipped school as a child to watch the first day of March Madness, but he does remember playing hooky when the Yankees and Red Sox played their legendary tiebreaker game in 1978—he was a 14-year-old in a bar when Bucky Dent’s homer soared over the Green Monster (it was a different time). While Bilas didn’t drop any takes about how this year’s baseball standings will play out, he did wax poetic on college basketball teams with mascots like the Tritons and Lobos, whether coaches should wear suits again, and why some sleepy cities in the middle of the country are his preferred Final Four destinations.
GQ: Is there one pervasive thought about this year’s bracket that you keep coming back to?
Bilas: The number-one seeds are really, really strong. Florida, for me, has overtaken everyone else as the best team. As you know, that doesn’t mean they’re going to win, but they have the best chance to win. I think I would’ve put St. John’s in the Final Four in any other region but the one they’re in, because they’re in the same region as Florida. That’s how highly I think of Florida.
Do you find it useful or compelling or even worth your time to do the, “This team should have gotten in, this team shouldn’t have” exercise? How much time do you really devote to that mentally?
I used to get worked up over it, because when I was in college, one of the selection committee members happened to be our athletic director—a gentleman named Tom Butters. He used to say selection was the most important thing, that seeding wasn’t as important as selection. His saying was, “You can play your way out of a bad seed, but you can’t play your way into the tournament if you haven’t been selected.”
I mean, years ago I would be at the front of the line screaming about the injustice of the committee not sticking to their principles. Because to me, the principle is, who did you play and who did you beat? People say, “Anybody can win on a given day.” I don’t dispute that. My question would be, “Well, okay, how many given days did you have during the season?” Because if you didn’t have those given days, the team that had more given days should get in. So, I was surprised that North Carolina made the field. I thought even though their schedule was ridiculously difficult, and six of their losses were to top-five teams or something like that, I still felt other teams had won more games against really good competition. I would’ve taken a couple others first. Whether it’s Indiana, Ohio State, West Virginia, whatever. That surprised me. But it certainly didn’t warrant a governor of a state threatening legal action against the committee. That seemed kind of ridiculous to me.
But aren’t you sort of uniquely qualified to handle this? Aren’t you a bar certified lawyer in the state of North Carolina?
Yeah, I’m a practicing lawyer. This goes beyond examining the legal side of this. It’s just unseemly.
It’s embarrassing.
It’s embarrassing! What sort of effect do they think this is going to have? How many hands do you think will go up of people wanting to serve on the committee, if they’re going to be slapped with a subpoena and have to testify at a deposition? It’s so silly. It’s hard to even talk about how silly it is.
Do you have any interest in ever being on the committee?
No. I’ve been through the mock committee sessions before, to learn more about it, but this was years ago. I do think having an independent group that does it—an independent committee that doesn’t have conference affiliation or team affiliation—would be the best possible thing. I’ve always felt like having people who were immersed in the game making the decisions would be better. I mean, I’m sure I could serve on a hospital board, but I’d rather have people who are involved in the medical field serving on the board.
But this is the way it’s always been. The committee generally, and really most often, gets it right. Or at least close to right. We can quarrel over, “This team should have been a five seed, or this team should have been a four seed.” That’s fine. I understand that. But overall, it works pretty well. And at the end of the day, we’re arguing about the 45th and 46th best teams in the country. There is a part of me—I hope this doesn’t sound snarky—that says, “If you want to keep out of that discussion, win more.”
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