The committee and the cash

[NotAnAlum]

In an earlier thread Chicos posted a poll and commented that maybe the issues over schools like Syracuse being left out could be fixed by expanding the field.  I think the problem lies else ware.  I believe that process that involves subjective judgments with what appears to be no reliance on an objective measure (like RPI) is always going to yield a lot of questioning of the result.  Furthermore when the people making that subjective judgment work for institutions that have a large financial stake in the results of judgment you are asking for controversy. 
Now I know that these guys are supposed to leave the room when a school who is a member of the conference they represent is being voted on.  But anybody who has worked on a high powered committee knows that most of the real work that influences decisions gets done WAY BEFORE a vote is taken.  There is so much money at stake if a conference gets another team in vs. being left out or makes it easier for a team to get to the next round due to a more favorable seed or venue that I think it is unfair to have ANY of these ADs involved in the selection process.  In football, for all its flaws, we have the BCS standings.  You can follow the BCS standings and at the end you know which 2 teams will play for the national title.  You can argue that the way the BCS is calculated gives too much weight to that or not enough weight to this but in the end we at least can agree on what the result of the formula was.  To me this would be like in the football season just ended with the standings Ohio State, USC, Florida and Louisville in the top 4 that a committee made up of AD s from the Big Ten, Big 12 and Big East BUT NOT from the SEC or PAC-10 announced that the title game would be Ohio State vs. Louisville.  No objective measurement, that's our decision and its final.  Can you imagine the uproar?  That's basically what we have here when teams that are not even in the AP or Coach's Top 25 get 4 and 5 seeds because "they seemed to be playing well the last time we saw them".  I'm not exactly sure who should be on the committee (hey how about the referees, they see a lot of games) but it just isn't realistic to ask any man to be "objective" and impartial when a decision one way or the other could mean Millions of $ for the organization he works for most of which will go to the budget at the organization that he administers.