The crazy things fans say

The first installment in the Carmody Court original series, "The crazy things fans say"...

Here is a complete recap of a misguided fan's post on Wildcat Report earlier on this Selection Sunday (with my reactions in bold):

" [NU] has proven that it has the ability to play very well or very poorly. I would be more surprised if we ended up in NY than losing in round 1."

How can anyone make this type of statement before the brackets are even set? I'm not saying this notion is necessarily wrong, but it is ridiculous to reach such a conclusion before even analyzing NU's potential road to MSG. Gotta love blatant ignorance!

"From top to bottom there will be more good teams in the NIT than in the NCAA due to automatic bids from lower conferences in the NCAA."

Speaking of blatant ignorance... this is one of the most ridiculous statements I've ever read from a college basketball fan. First of all, the NIT has automatic bids, too, for the regular season conference champs that lost their conference tourneys and were not invited to the Big Dance. Secondly, if you want to make an apples-to-apples comparison, you have to compare the fields at the same size. The NCAAs will be down to 32 teams, the same size as the NIT field, by the first Saturday (i.e., Round 2). Does anyone seriously think that the NCAAs would have an inferior set of 32 teams, top-to-bottom, to the NIT?!?!?!? Holy shit! An "NCAA-NIT Challenge" that lined up the seeds to play each other would be a slaughter, possibly a complete 32-0 skunking. Throw the names in a hat and draw randomly and the NCAA still wins over 85% of those games.

"Also, basketball is a game of matchups and we might not match up well to an opponent."

A good point (which was somehow missed in the fan's first point) that is not fully appreciated by many fans. Hurrah!