The college basketball system is tilted to teams in the six <span style="font-weight: bold;">BCS conferences</span>. Teams in the other 25, or at least those which might harbor dreams of being competitive with the schools in the first six, have been forced to choose between playing home games and playing good games. In some cases, even a choice is unavailable to them, as schools in the Missouri Valley Conference have discovered in the past few seasons.
Whatever the justifications-and the most common one, as in football, is that the basketball programs at the big schools have to bring in money to support the entire athletic program-the end result is a playing field that doesn't give enough schools opportunities for quality wins. Because of this, the arguments for the last few spots in the NCAA tournament often come down to <span style="font-weight: bold;">BCS schools</span> with middling records but some quality wins over good teams who are forced to play them at home, and <span style="font-weight: bold;">non-BCS schools</span> with better records but a distinct lack of visits from highly-ranked teams.</p>
That won't be the case this year. This year, in part because of a lack of opportunity, in part because of a lack of converting the few opportunities that existed, <span style="font-weight: bold;">non-BCS schools</span> will be virtually absent from the at-large discussion. BCS conferences at one point seemed to have a chance to sweep all 34 slots; that is unlikely now, but taking at least 30 seems within reach should Butler, Gonzaga and Davidson win their conference tournaments.</p>
