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Not All Top 50 or Top 25 Games Are Created Equal

I have a small little pet peeve when it comes to bracketology and when they pop up numbers blindly on the board. Every single time ESPN or CBS or whoever throws up numbers to compare two teams they one of the stats they throw up is record vs. Top 50 and sometimes record vs. Top 25. This flat out annoys the shit out of me. It puts a number on the board without a face.

For instance, I heard someone on ESPN arguing that Oklahoma deserved a #1 bid over UConn because the Sooners had a 5-3 record over Top 25 teams and the Huskies only went 4-3 against Top 25 teams. What the hell does that mean? Did Oklahoma play Pitt twice? Did Oklahoma beat Louisville by a ton on the road? Absolutely not. Is there a big difference between playing two #1 seeds in the tournament than playing a couple of 4 or 5 seeds? Absolutely. So why do people just blindly use these moronic metrics as arguments?

Is there a measurable difference between beating the 49th ranked team and the 51st ranked team? Not really. So why do we just throw up the stupid number like it actually means something. Put a face behind the victories and losses. Paint a complete picture rather than arbitrarily picking a cutoff for a meaningless metric.
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