Since the labels have been introduced, let's label the positions:
protectionist and free trade.  The protectionists are preventing the free
trade of interconference games by forcing their teams to play the vast
majority of games intra-conference.  The free trade conference is playing
many more games with other conferences, but many of the strong teams are in
the protectionist conference.
 
Then the protectionists invent something called a "strength of schedule
ranking" which is allegedly the correct way to bias the inter-conference
standings...  Somehow, their teams are ranked much higher than teams in
the other conference...
 
Now who's being political?
--
Craig
 
P.S. - this is not meant as a slam against TCHCR, which has done a
tremendous amount of good in focusing attention on the problem of fairly
ranking teams.  Its a great contribution.
 
P.P.S. - can someone out there show a comparison of ranking systems vs. the
actual results of the tourney over the last few years?  If it can be proven
that they are more accurate in predicting winners than conference standings,
then I would withdraw many of my objections.