Here is the result in plain text:
What better way to commemorate the 40-year anniversary of the NCAA Tournament’s expansion to 64 teams than to create a flawless, universally beloved ranking of every men’s basketball champion in that era? That is, of course, impossible, but I took a stab at it nonetheless.
For such a monumental task, I tried to tether myself to some objective guideposts, creating a numerical scoring system as a starting point. Multiple factors went into those scores:
1. Seed – No. 1 seeds received the most points. If you’re among the best teams ever, you’d likely have earned a top seed in your given year.
2. Regular season champions – It seems reasonable to say that if a team was one of the all-time greats, it would have been the best in its conference and won the regular season title. Half credit was given for sharing the crown.
3. Conference tournament champions – Winning this event earned an extra bonus. Teams that did not have a chance to play a conference tournament (some of the older Big Ten and Pac-10/Pac-12 squads) received half credit.
4. Overall win percentage – This one was pretty simple. The fewer losses, the better.
5. Difficulty of NCAA Tournament path – Teams that faced a more challenging path (based on the sum of seeds played) were given a slight reward.
6. Dominance of NCAA run – I summed each team’s total margin of victory over six NCAA Tournament games to approximate their dominance. The higher the margin, the better.
7. Talent – This measure was by far the most subjective. Was this roster loaded with stars and future NBA standouts? Or was it more of a strong college team without much shine beyond the title run?
Of course, this entire system can be debated. There are no adjustments for the strength of a particular conference, so winning a loaded ACC is treated the same as winning a watered-down Big Ten.
But combining all of those factors led me to what I believe is a reasonable and defensible list. The best of the best separated themselves with their season-long dominance and emphatic victories in the NCAA Tournament, resulting in two top tiers of all-time greats.
A last note to all of the terrific teams of the 2019-20 season (I’m talking to you, Kansas and Dayton and San Diego State and Michigan State and Gonzaga and Baylor): You may insert yourself into this list wherever you see fit. That’s the beauty of the imagination.
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