Inside NCAA Selection: Jerry Palm Reveals NCAA Tournament Selection Process

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See store or JCP.com for details. All right. It is a college basketball Jamboree today. It's I don't even know what they're calling today in the ACC. It's not a quarterfinal. It's not a it's not a round of 16, which usually leads to a quarterfinal quarterfinal.

It's sort of a half of a round of 16. Congratulations. You made it this far. It's a yes, but don't celebrate. Yes, Jim Boeheim says Jerry Palm CBS Sports.com. Our chief bracket ecologist joins us to talk about all the basketball that is about to be played and whether it has any meaning at all. Jerry, how are you? What are you in a bunker today? No, no, I'm in Stanford, Connecticut, because that's where the RHQ studios are. So I've been I've been here for quite a while.

I'll be Sports Network CBS Sports Network, starting Friday. So you're in a Bobby Valentine's bar. I have been there before. I at the moment, it seems to be closed.

No. Well, you know, he's the I was there last week. And this week, it hasn't been open when it's supposed to be open.

So I don't know what's going on. He's the ad at a what is the college in in Connecticut, where he is the athletic director. I'm not sure he's still the athletic director. He also ran for mayor at one point of Stanford, Connecticut. And you know, he invented the rap sandwich, right? I didn't know that. Yeah, he did.

If you see him, just ask him. All right, let's see you're in. You're in Stanford today. Jay Billis was on with us a couple of days ago, and I saw him on with Scott Van Pelt and he had an interesting idea because we do apply a lot of maybe unnecessary importance to these conference basketball tournament individual games. So this team needs to, you know, win two games in their conference tournament to give themselves a better chance, blah, blah, blah. And according to Jay, that gives teams in bigger leagues, even more of an unfair advantage.

Would you be in favor of simply when the regular seasons are over, simply saying here are the at large teams and at the bottom of the ranked and at the bottom of that at large pool, you are vulnerable to teams in other leagues, potentially stealing your bids. Would you be would you be on board with something like that? No. Why? That's nuts. Why is it nuts? Why is it nuts?

What? Because you're asking the committee to meet for basically a week and a half to put together a list and then keep monitoring their list. It's creating it and then another five days monitoring it. They could do that on the zoom. No, they can do. No, they can do all that. No, look, the game seem overvalued because it's everybody's last chance, right? If you do what Jay's suggesting that they're going to do, they're just going to move it backwards and say the last three games of the regular season are going to be overvalued.

Well, that's get treated the same way. But at least they're in but at least they're in the regular season. That is my point.

Well, this is part of the season too. So nobody gives like Indiana State didn't get they're not going to get credit for getting to the finals of the Missouri vet, whatever conference or Missouri Valley Conference, right? Sure, they will.

Why? They don't get they don't get credit for getting to the final. They didn't they didn't win. They didn't win like a bunch of good games and just get to the final. Well, okay, but they getting to the finals is not a concept to the committee, but they get credit for getting to the finals. Yeah, but but they're not quad one wins.

No, they're not. Did they play Bradley? They didn't play Bradley because Bradley could have been. Gosh, you know, that's that's just gross that that would end up being a quad one win for for different reasons.

Jerry Palm is joining us here on the Adam Gold show. All right, so I know you are the same. What? Not all quad one wins are the same. Do the do the committee have a chance to get to the finals? Do the committees know that? Truly do.

Really? They have a five-day meeting. They could just look at quad records and then, you know, put it away. Well, do broadcast, but but then do broadcasters know this?

No, for the most part. Okay, you can't put entire resumes up on screen, you know, so the quad record thing, easy way to summarize. So maybe my problem is more with broadcasters than with the committee itself.

We'll see. Well, I mean, the face of broadcasters don't have they have to go do things quickly. They have to summarize that. They can't put an entire team's resume up there and spend an hour dissecting it. It's just so they put their quad one record up there. They don't even put all four quads up there. Usually, no, because I mean, we don't really need people just care about the best games, right? So that's so it's lazy analysis, but I don't mean that is pejorative.

It sounds because it's just that's the way the time they have to do things. There's no other way to do it. Let me ask you a philosophical question. What are better? What's better in the eyes of the committee? And this is a yes. This is a one or the other.

There is no checkbox, you know, if there's a different answer. What's better? I want you to give me one or the other.

I love talking to Jerry Palm. What's better? Good wins or what's more meaningful? Good wins or bad losses? Neither.

What do you mean need? That's not an answer. Well, it's also but it's the correct answer. I could lie to you, Adam, and lie to your audience, which I always do, right? No, no, no, no, no. Nobody's ever accused you of lying to this audience, ever.

But you want me to do that. The answer is neither. Really, the actual answer is it depends. When teams are being compared, usually what stands out as being different in the comparison is the most important thing, and that could literally be anything. So one team is you're looking at three or four teams, and one of them, you know, they all look up relatively equal. And, you know, over these different areas, but one team's got like a couple of quad four losses. Well, guess what stands out the losses? Well, yeah, if all things are being equal. So one of them is one of them is looking at, like, five pretty good wins, and the others don't have nearly that many.

Guess what stands out the wins. So it depends on the comparison. Strength of schedule sometimes stands out. It could be, you know, your record away from home, you know, is what stands out. It depends on who's being compared at the time and what stands out.

So there is no one thing is definitely better than the other at all times. Adam Golden Studio with my man Coach Pete DeRuta, Capital Financial Advisory Group. You have a 401k, but you're changing jobs. You're taking that 401k with you.

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Investment Advisory Services offered by Capital Financial Advisory Group, a North Carolina registered investment advisor. Permission to treat the witness as hostile, your honor. I'm just kidding, Jerry. Jerry Palm, CBSSports.com, chief bracketologist. All right, so you wrote that Wake needs to win today against Notre Dame, and then they'll have a shot against Pitt. Is it fair to look at should Wake win? Is it fair to look at the game tomorrow against Pittsburgh as a de facto elimination game? It would seem that way.

Yeah, that seems to depress you. It always depends on what other teams do, but those are teams that I don't have in my bracket to begin with, and so if you take a loss to one of the teams you're competing with, your odds of getting pushed up high enough for both of them to get in is pretty slim. I think both teams. It's more likely that the winner also gets left out.

Here's what's interesting to me, because I've watched these teams all year. I think both teams are significantly better than Virginia, who looks like they're going to get in the field. I'm not mailing an invitation to Virginia yet.

Not that I get to mail these invitations, but they weren't better enough when they needed to be. I understand. I'm not arguing that. Wake and Pitt are really different resumes. Like Pitt actually had beaten good teams away from home.

Yes, they have. Wake can't beat anybody away from home. But Pitt might also have, off the top of my head, worse losses than Wake does too. They accomplished less. They accomplished less outside of the league, is what they did. Who did?

Wake? No, Pitt did. Pitt did. Pitt had a significantly worse non-conference strength of schedule, didn't do much outside the league. They have done more of their damage inside the league.

They started 1-5 in ACC play. We no longer have that last 10 category. Not for almost 20 years. Right, I know that. I'm okay with it. I really don't care. I do think, though, it is interesting. You have St. John's in your bracket, and nobody is going to convince me that their recent hot streak, largely built on the back of beating horrendous teams, isn't going to play a factor in whether they get in or not. But we're not going to debate the merits of St. John's, who did lose to Boston College on a neutral floor. Right. So, I'll just leave it at that, Your Honor.

All of these teams at the bottom of the bracket, all of them, you look at these teams and it's easy to find just how flawed they really are, and everybody keeps talking about expanding to get even worse teams. Which is why I remain firmly in favor of going back to 64. My final question for you is, will it make your life more difficult when we go to whatever the number is, 72, 78, 81? Yes.

Really? Yes. The larger you make the field, because the pile of teams at the bottom look more the same. They're more similar in quality, the further down the bracket, because if you think of quality of the teams, the one to however many zillion we have now is like a bell curve. So, the closer you get to the center of the list of teams, the more the quality is the same. So, how do you separate them? It's hard to separate them now.

You add another eight teams, they're all going to be equal. Right. You're going to be pulling names out of a hat.

You should do that. That's what you should do on CBS Sports HQ. If you expand to 96, you're definitely going to be pulling names out of a hat.

For the last easily 20 teams in the bracket, you'll be pulling names out of a hat. Sacred Heart is where Bobby Valentine, I don't believe he's still the AD there, but Sacred Heart is where Bobby Valentine is. Absolutely. Oh, it's a Bobby Valentine from baseball too. 100%.

I love Bobby V. He might still be wearing the fake glasses. We got to go. JerryPomCBSSports.com at JPPomCBS on Twitter. I'll talk to you very soon, man. All right, take care. You got it. Thank you.