NCAA TOURNEY SELECTION COMMITTEE Ex-YSU aide says process of picking teams is fair

Floyd Kerr defended the integrity of the system.
By JOHN KOVACH
VINDICATOR SPORTS STAFF
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Floyd Kerr believes that the process used to select the 34 at-large teams for the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament is an equitable one based on objectively evaluating information, due process and integrity.
"[It's fair] because we don't have one person doing it. We have a committee that is doing it in conjunction with the NCAA," said Kerr, who is serving his first year of a four-year appointment as a member of the 10-person NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament Selection Committee.
Kerr is a former assistant basketball coach and assistant athletic director at Youngstown State, who now is in his second year as athletic director at Southern University and A & amp;M College in Baton Rouge, La.
The committee work that Kerr described is similar to a jury process.
"We are sequestered, put into an environment to make an informed decision. We keep the mission of the NCAA in front of us," said Kerr, 55, a native of South bend, Ind. And that mission is "to preserve the integrity of the [selection] process and the tournament."
Named Southern AD in 2000 after leaving YSU, Kerr became a committee member in September of 2001.
He said his four-year assignment with the committee is "a year-round, on-going process of gathering information [about teams] to make an objective decision."
Kerr explained that the committee members "assemble the information and discuss it," and then the teams are selected on "a voting system." And, "It's an extensive process."
Responsibility: The committee's job is to fill the four pairings brackets with 16 teams in each of four regional tournaments (South, West, East and Midwest) in the 65-team field (the extra team comes from a play-in game to determine a first-round qualifier), and also to seed the selected teams.
While 31 of the teams are automatic qualifiers by winning league championships, the other 34 must be determined by the committee.
Kerr said these 34 selections are made based on "RPI [Ratings Percentage Index], strength of schedule, league ratings, injuries to key players, and ratings in USA Today and other newspapers. There are a lot of factors that go into that."
He also noted that this year more value was placed on the strength of a team's out-of-conference schedule.
Also, the emphasis this year in making the pairings was "to keep as many teams as possible close to [their] region, and I think we were successful with that."
Kerr said there were four teams in each bracket pod for a certain geographical area.
"The idea was to take each pod and send it to a certain region," he said.
A team had to win four regional games to qualify for the Final Four in Atlanta.
This year's four regional sites were Lexington, Ky., San Jose, Calif., Syracuse, N.Y., and Madison, Wisc. Each regional champ qualified for the Final Four in Atlanta. The championship game was last night, Maryland beating Indiana.
Credits YSU, Tressel: Kerr credits the value of his seven-year stay at YSU, particularly Jim Tressel, for giving him the opportunity to actualize his potential and pave the way to where he is today.
Kerr came to YSU in 1993 as an assistant basketball coach under Dan Peters, when Tressel was the football coach. Then when Tressel also became athletic director, he tapped Kerr as his assistant.
Kerr left YSU in July of 2000 to take the Southern University AD post.
"My experience at YSU and the opportunities that Jim Tressel gave me to become assistant athletic director set the foundation to get where I am today," said Kerr. "He gave me the responsibility and the role as an administrator and being in charge of all these sports. I got to communicate with everyone from the president to our staff."
While assistant AD, Kerr got involved with NCAA programs which helped him to further develop and hone his leadership skills.
"Two years before I left YSU in the fall of 1998, I joined a committee with the NCAA on men's basketball issues, and began work with that," said Kerr.
"And at that same time I took part in the NCAA Fellows Leadership Development Program. The program is designed to help assistant ADs to prepare themselves to become ADs through NCAA training."
He said he also joined an NCAA committee on women's issues.
"Then, when I got Southern University, I was invited to join the NCAA Basketball Selection Committee."
Objective as AD: Kerr said his goal at Southern University is "to play a leadership role for the department of athletics. My objective coming in to this position is to develop more revenue and create a strategic marketing plan and to take us to next level."
So far, Kerr has overseen improvements to the football stadium and basketball arena and baseball field, while the school is planning to build a new indoor sports complex beginning in two years.
Kerr is married to the former Vivian Lee, who served as an assistant to the dean in the College of Education at YSU, and operated the Generating Opportunities for Educators (GOE) program. The Kerrs have a daughter, Kimberly, a 1997 YSU graduate.
kovach@vindy.com