(See below for correction.) Tulsa, Gonzaga, Central Michigan and Butler each advanced past the first round of the NCAA men's basketball tournament last year despite being underdogs against higher-seeded teams.
On Feb. 21, they will have a chance to face off against each other in the second-ever Bracket Buster Saturday. The event, which is sponsored by ESPN, will pit 46 of the nation's top mid-major conference teams -- those that receive little national media attention but have successful programs -- against each other to help them gain widespread recognition.
But don't expect to see Penn on the "worldwide leader in sports" this February, as the Ivy League has declined an invitation to play.
"We had some conversations with conferences that were participating and its sponsors," Ivy League Executive Director Jeff Orleans said. "It would have required us to take a weekend from the Ivy schedule in the winter and remove games from the schedule."
The scheduling problem centers around the Ancient Eight's policy of playing nearly exclusively weekend games. On the weekend of Bracket Buster Saturday, the Quakers are scheduled to host Brown on Feb. 20 and Yale on the 21st.
"From my perspective, representing Penn, I was interested in participating," Penn Athletic Director Steve Bilsky said in a prepared statement. "But the overall league feeling was that since we only play weekends and are not allowed to switch the game to mid-week by Ivy League rules, we were not able to reschedule the games that would be displaced the weekend of the Bracket Buster."
Penn and Princeton will meet twice this year on a Tuesday. Otherwise no midweek Ivy League games are scheduled this season.
Orleans cites this tradition as the main setback to playing.
"Our conclusion was that it's not feasible," he said. "We're a conference that has a very clear rule -- we don't want midweek traveling or games."
The executive director also noted that it is very unlikely that the Ancient Eight would play in the event anytime soon because the conference schedule -- which varies each year -- is made 16 years in advance.
"We do that so the rotation of teams is in a very long-term rotation, to try and even things out," Orleans said.
Yet the organizers of the event would like to see the Ancient Eight participate.
"I think we would like to have Ivy League representation down the road," one of the organizers of Bracket Buster Saturday and commissioner of the Missouri Valley Conference Doug Elgin said. "We haven't planned far enough in advance to include conferences that already have their schedule released."
A total of eleven conferences are represented. The only other mid-major conferences to decline invitation to the event were the Mountain West and Big Sky conferences.
Bracket Buster Saturday will be entering its second year of a two-year agreement with ESPN.
Last year, members of the Missouri Valley, Mid-American and Western Athletic conferences, as well as representatives of the Horizon League, Gonzaga, Western Kentucky and the University of California at Santa Barbara, approached the cable sports network about creating the event. It would feature teams that could pull major upsets in the NCAA tournament.
This year's 46-team field is an expansion from last season's 18 teams from seven conferences.
A unique aspect of Bracket Buster Saturday is that teams don't know who they will be matched up against until Feb. 1. By participating in the event, teams agree to a home-and-home series -- one team is the home team one year and then the other is the home team the next -- with the opponent that ESPN decides.
All of the games will be broadcast on ESPN's Full Court satellite package, according to Elgin. Five of the 23 games will be nationally televised on ESPN and ESPN2, while five more will be broadcast regionally by ESPN.
Orleans said that while the Ivy League ultimately declined the invitation, the national publicity was tempting, as it would help raise the national reputation of Ivy basketball and aid recruiting efforts.
"We wouldn't have spent as much time on it as we did if we didn't think it was an intriguing idea," Orleans said.
While Orleans has expressed his doubts about whether the Ancient Eight will ever participate in the event, others are more optimistic.
"I hope the idea stays on the table and maybe the League can participate in the future," Bilsky said.
A Lafayette alumnus, of the Patriot League, Elgin is familiar with the competitiveness of Ivy League basketball.
"Those are teams we'd love to see down the road, but they have unique scheduling needs that might prohibit their play," Elgin said. "We want to have continuing conversation with Jeff Orleans."
The MVC commissioner also indicated that the conferences would not move the event to an earlier date to accommodate the Ivy League, because by placing the weekend at the end of the season, the best teams can match up against each other.
Elgin hopes that ESPN will extend the Bracket Buster contract as the event grows each year.
"We hope that the event gains prestige so that teams knock on ESPN's door asking to play," he said.
While Orleans indicated the difficulty of the 16-year schedule, the Southern Conference is an example of a conference that was able to change its schedule to accommodate the event. This conference, however, plays games during the week.
"It's a matter of having conferences prioritize the opportunity," Elgin said. "It's a very, very complicated puzzle for leagues when you change a schedule that's already adopted."
Correction
In this info box, the years 2002 and 2003 should read 2003 and 2004.Bracket busting In 2002, ESPN and several mid-major conferences organized a weekend of games to provide smaller schools with a chance of winning national exposure. The Ivy League is not participating. Bracket Buster 2002: The first year of the event featured 18 teams from seven conferences. Bracket Buster 2003: After a successful debut, the slate of games expanded to 23 -- featuring 46 teams representing 11 conferences. Television coverage: Five of the 23 games will be on ESPN or ESPN2 nationally, while five more will be onregional ESPN.
