Before you build that better mousetrap, decide what kind of rodent you want to catch.

At first glance, this seems contrarian:

With a field of 65 teams — possibly growing soon to 96 — the NCAA tournament might feel like more of a crapshoot than a fair method of selecting the nation’s best college-basketball team. But it turns out that it has a better chance of coronating the best regular-season team than the NFL’s 12-team playoff does.

Because

… the NFL — which has just 32 teams overall, fewer than half the number of teams in the NCAA tournament field — might seem to have a far easier time seeing its best flourish. Also, NFL playoff games before the Super Bowl are played at the field of the higher-seeded team, which usually is the better team.

So how to explain this?  Two reasons:

But football games include far fewer possessions than basketball games, meaning that the superior team has fewer chances to assert its superiority. And the best college hoops teams usually get top seeds, so they get relatively easy early-round games…

both of which would suggest that if your primary consideration in designing a D-1 college football postseason is to have the best teams playing for the title, then you want as small a playoff field as is credible (i.e., eliminate the Auburn 2004 scenario).  That, of course, is not the same thing as settling it on the field, letting Cinderella mess with your brackets, funneling more money to every school in the Mountain West Conference, etc. – so other people’s mileage may vary.

Saturday morning buffet

Brats aren’t on the menu today.

• Skip that 40-time nonsense.  This is fast.
• Olin Buchanan tells “William in North Little Rock” to take that meme and shove it.
• With Pete Carroll gone to the NFL and Jeremiah Masoli just gone, who’s the Pac-10 favorite this year?
• The only thing holding back a 128-school basketball tournament is… the Masters.
• You figure they’ll call him “CT”?
• Sign of the times in Columbia.
• “… with rare exceptions, spending more on a football or men’s basketball program does not yield increases in alumni giving, net operating revenue, winning or academic quality.”
• The prodigal wide receiver returns.  Hey, if wandering off and coming back is good enough for the head corch, it ought to be good enough for the player, too, right?