Every year for over the past three decades, the Enterprise Center in St. Louis, Missouri, has been home to one of the best conference tournaments that mid-major college basketball has to offer. “Arch Madness” has a special feel to it. The fans are passionate, the programs are rich in tradition, and most importantly, teams have to earn it.
There were no shortcuts in Arch Madness. In my lifetime, you won three or four straight games to win the tournament and that was that. The stakes being that high made it special, and it still will be. Fans will still come and fans will still cheer, but Arch Madness as we know it is gone, and the league will be worse off for it.
Arch Madness is Conforming
To be blunt, the Missouri Valley Conference is following a new trend among mid-major leagues. Over the past couple of seasons, we have slowly started to see mid-major conferences create these staggered brackets in order to give more of an advantage to the teams that did the best in the regular season. Take the Sun Belt for example. The Sun Belt’s top two seeds don’t have to play in the first five rounds of the conference tournament! Thankfully, the MVC has not gone to that an extreme of a level, but following the trend for the league is simply not necessary.
Over the past decade, there simply has not been the level of parity in Arch Madness that would require giving the top seeds an advantage. Since 2017, a top two seed has won Arch Madness six times; however, a top two KenPom team has won the tournament eight times. So the question has to be asked: If the best teams are usually winning, why do we have to protect them?
There’s also the concept that there is no real elite program that is heads and shoulders above the rest of the league. Conferences like the Big South and the Southland, which have dominant programs, could benefit from a format like this because their best team has a much better chance of winning an NCAA Tournament game. That’s not the case in the MVC. In the conference, programs go through brief periods of dominance, but it’s never more than that. The Big South, for example, has High Point, which is spending way more money than the rest of the league.
Arch Madness Change an Overcorrection
Despite the evidence, the 2026 tournament likely served as a stepping stone for the new format to go into place. The No. 1 seed, Belmont, was knocked off in convincing fashion in the quarterfinals by Drake. In the new format, Belmont would have a bye to the semifinals and Drake would’ve had to beat Murray State & UIC/Southern Illinois in consecutive days just to reach a game with Belmont.
Northern Iowa winning the tournament as the six seed might have also factored into this decision, even though that is more outrageous than the Belmont part of this. Yes, UNI was the sixth seed, but they were the second-ranked team on KenPom in the conference. They had a key injury mid-season, and once they got healthy, they were right back to being one of the top teams in the league. External factors will always play into the outcome of a season, and the new format doesn’t fix that.
What does it mean for Arch Madness fans?
A big part of the Arch Madness experience is being there for the weekend. As I said, it is good basketball, and being there for the three/four days with all of the other fan bases hanging out in St. Louis creates a special atmosphere. With the new format, the top two seeds essentially won’t have fans there until Saturday. That likely takes out two of the strongest fanbases on a yearly basis as there is more motivation to go to a conference tournament if your team has a real chance to win it.
While the tournament will still be good, it won’t be the same. This is a needless mistake by the MVC when it comes to the players, coaches and fans. There’s no doubt that the conference took a step in the wrong direction today.
