The NCAA Basketball Tournament Pairings Will Be Announced Today

Arnold Ferrin, chairman of the NCAA Division I men’s basketball committee, will become both hero and villain today when his group announces who plays where and when in the $32.6 million extravaganza known as the NCAA basketball tournament.

The tournament involving 64 elite teams begins March 17, ending 63 games and 18 days later in Kansas City’s Kemper Arena with the 50th national championship game.

The nine-member committee, which meets for three days each March, determines the final makeup of the field and sets the pairings. One of Ferrin’s prime duties is to appear on national television Sunday and justify his group’s decisions.

A total of 30 teams will earn automatic berths in the draw through their conferences. The committee picks the other 34. Ferrin can be a hero to the lucky 34 and a villain to those that just missed.

Basically, teams in selected conferences receive automatic bids either by winning their league’s postseason tournament or by capturing the regular season championship in conferences that do not have such tournaments.

The remaining bids go to teams the committee decides are most worthy, regardless of conference affiliation.

Little is ever certain when the committee ensconces itself in a Kansas City hotel with computer printouts, coaches’ evaluations and the members’ own judgment to decide which of the 290 Division I members will be invited to split approximately $32.6 million in prize money.

Every team the committee tabs will be given approximately $231,000 just for showing up. Teams that advance to the Final Four each will earn more than $1.1 million. In 1944, when Ferrin led Utah to the national championship and was named the most valuable player, winning the tournament was worth $3,513.98 to the Utes.

This is Ferrin’s sixth year on the committee. Each of the previous five years he has used the flight back home to Utah, where he is an assistant to the vice president for university relations, to go over the bracket. Each time he has concluded it was the best the committee could make. He looks for a similarly relaxing flight home this time.

But Ferrin terms the committee’s job a “can’t win” situation. No matter whom they choose, another team will make some justification as to why it should have been selected.

“The 64 teams that we select will all feel like they deserve to be there, but the 10 or 15 teams that were on the bubble, or on the periphery, will all think that we don’t know what we’re doing,” he said.

“It would just panic me if there was even a question of politics. I read where coaches say we’re old, fat, bald men in a smoke-filled room and we don’t know what we’re doing. Well, no one on the committee smokes and it’s not at all political.

“As chair, I look with nervousness about the responsibility,” Ferrin said.

The committee does know what it is doing and members traditionally leave Kansas City feeling they made the best tournament possible.

In addition to Ferrin, the committee this year includes Ohio Valley Conference Commissioner James Delany, Arizona Athletic Director Cedric Dempsey, Vanderbilt Athletic Director Roy Kramer, West Virginia Athletic Director Fred Schaus, Texas Christian Athletic Director Frank Windegger, Mid-Eastern Athletic Conference Commissioner Kenneth Free, University of Dayton Athletic Director Thomas Frericks and University of Illinois Athletic Director Neale Stoner. Free, Frericks and Stoner are serving for the first time.

Said Ferrin, “My past five years (on the committee) flying home from the process, I’ve been impressed with the integrity of the people on the committee who go into this process with the feeling that their responsibility is to do what is best for the basketball tournament. And I’ve been pleased and satisfied that we’ve fulfilled that responsibility.

“The only thing I want is that when I fly home I believe that’s the best we can do. Everybody will critique and evaluate what we’ve done. That’s why we have to do it the very best way we can without any politics involved.”

The NCAA tournament, in Ferrin’s playing days 44 years ago, was a far different ballgame.

“When I was a player they only invited eight teams,” Ferrin said. “We knew a week, maybe two, in advance who was in the tournament. It wasn’t like they were announced Sunday at 4:30 central time and the teams have to be at the sites Wednesday.

“It’s gone from the eight teams to the 64, so we probably make more (teams) sit on the edge of their seats all day Sunday. But this is a good process, stimulating for the tournament.”