My Husband the Sports Writer

When Birch closes the door to study in our office at home, I assume he's actually studying most of the time. After all, who wouldn't get distracted by the internet or take a little nap once in a while?

But today I learned that another distraction for Birch is emailing his opinion to writers on espn.com. If you look on the college basketball home page today, you'll see a letter he wrote included in an article written about the NCAA basketball tournament. Nice job, babe!

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=4073000

I'm not sure how long this link will work, so here's his letter:

Mr. Lunardi,

I enjoyed your most recent article, "Re-examining the at-large 'eye test'." In full disclosure I must admit that I'm a student at the University of Arizona and was completely shocked when we made it into the tournament, but we'll take what we can get.

You speak of which team is "best" and "most deserving" to get an at-large bid to the field of 65. Why not examine who is "best" and "most deserving" to be in the tournament overall? Do your No. 15 and No. 16 seeds represent the best teams in the country? Where would they fit in your RPI-based evidence chart? Is the conference champion of a crappy conference really "deserving" to play with the "best" teams in the country? For example, should David Stern start including D-league division or conference champions in the NBA playoffs? Aren't they as "deserving" as Morehead State or Radford (I think there's more parity between the D-league and the NBA as compared to UNC and Morehead State)?

I think we need to stop giving out automatic bids to conference champions and start taking the best 64 (not 65) teams in college basketball to the NCAA tournament. As you said, the best and the most deserving are the same teams. Right?

Thanks,
Birch, Tucson, Ariz.