NCAA Selection Sunday 2010 Sure to Cause Controversy

NCAA Selection Sunday 2010 has the ring of mystery, the sort of strange secrecy perfected by Skull and Bones or the Pentagon.

Ten wise men hunkered down in a hotel room, with round-the-clock security, pouring over arcane data and debating who's worthy and who's not.

Welcome to Selection Sunday, the made-for-TV spectacle that sets the stage for the NCAA Basketball Tournament. For five days, the selection committee crunches numbers, compares RPI stats and engages in "spirited' discussions." Then, in less than an hour, the bracket goes from blank to full, and March Madness kicks in.

Anger. Euphoria. Bewilderment. It's all there.

The problem for the selection committee isn't the top of the bracket. It's the bottom, home of the at-large seeds.

Now that the 2010 NCAA tournament has its seeds, here are a couple historical tidbits of controversy around the selections:

In 2006, CBS analyst Bill Packer tore into the committee for granting four berths to the Missouri Valley Conference. Committee chairman Craig Littlepage appeared stunned.

"I was a little bit surprised from the standpoint that I could not understand where he was coming from,'' he later told the Newport News Daily Press. "He went into a long discussion about previous years and conferences' previous years' success. Now understand that this is an interview that lasts about three minutes. And he starts out this whole thing with a preamble that's about 45 seconds and there's not a question at the end of it. So I was surprised, not at the grilling if you will, but the lack of clarity in what he was trying to say or ask.''

The ink had barely dried on the 2004 bracket when Packer criticized the top seeding of Saint Joe's. "Without question Oklahoma State deserved to be a No. 1 seed," Packer said. "I don't think Saint Joseph's can beat Oklahoma State, Texas and Pittsburgh."

A few minutes later Saint Joe's coach Phil Martelli fired back during an interview with Greg Gumbel. "Is Billy Packer playing for a team? We'd like to play against them. He's got a lot to say."

CBS pays big bucks for the tournament TV rights, and it wants the field announced just before "60 Minutes" airs in the Eastern Time Zone.

That's a tough deadline. In 2004, the committee had to ignore the results of the Big 12 and Big 10 championship games when both games ran long.

Sometimes the camera reveals all. Remember when Gonzaga received a fourth seed in 2006, instead of the expected No. 2. There wasn't a smile in sight.

Selection Sunday is usually a bonanza for bracketologists. Truth is, the job isn't that tough. Thirty-one spots go to automatic qualifiers, and the bulk of at-large candidates sort themselves out before Selection Sunday.

Picking tournament winners is another matter, as millions of Americans will discover by the following Sunday.