The first sign that I was going to be upset at this bracket came when I walked into the living room and heard my wife muttering, "They've already pissed me off."

She was talking about the selection committee seeding Florida as the overall number one seed and sending them to the Midwest (St. Louis), while Ohio State got the number three overall seed and was shipped to the South (San Antonio). This despite the fact that:

* Ohio State was ranked No. 1 in the country.

* Ohio State has the No. 1 RPI in the country (after games were played yesterday).

* Ohio State has the better strength of schedule (12 versus 38).

* Ohio State has a better winning percentage against the RPI top 100 (.833 versus .762).

* Ohio State has won 17 games in a row.

Yes, I know. Ohio State lost to Florida in Gainesville. But that was in December -- 21 games ago -- back before Santa had left the North Pole. And last time I consulted a map, Columbus was closer to St. Louis than Gainesville is.

The second sign that things were amiss yesterday was when Greg Gumbel threw it to a relatively serene Jim Nantz and Billy Packer. When I saw that the grumpy Packer was not foaming at the jowls like he was last year on Selection Sunday, I knew it was a bad thing.

There is no doubt that Gary Walters and the selection committee had a difficult job. There were more 20 win teams this season (104) than there had ever been in the history of the sport. (The previous high was 78.)

With conferences getting larger and larger (the Atlantic 10 Conference now has 14 teams) and more leagues resorting to unbalanced schedules because of their size, separating the curds and whey (or the wheat from the chaff if you're from Kansas) only adds to the debate. Splitting hairs is harder and harder to do each year.

So while I extend a hand to the committee for all of their hard work, and for being more open than ever before (such as conducting a behind the scenes demonstration for some college basketball writers last month), I'm also going to take my other hand and whack them on the back of the head because they missed badly on several things.

Let's start with the bottom of the bracket. If the opening round game (aka the “play-in” game) is designed to match up the two teams with the worst profile, then why is Niagara (22-11, RPI 136, SOS 236) packing and heading to Dayton to face Florida A&M (18-13, RPI 171, SOS 290)? Florida A&M has the worst profile in the tournament. But why is Jackson State (20-13, RPI 168, SOS 316) getting out of the opening round? I can't find a reason why.

One of the other major gripes concerning this bracket comes in the middle. Apparently the selection committee is a huge fan of the concept of Bracket Busters, because they decided to create three Bracket Buster matchups. Nevada and Creighton will square off, as will Butler and Old Dominion and BYU and Xavier.

But the true debate turns on two teams that are actually tied together because they played each other. Drexel took a trip to Syracuse and beat the Orange 84-79 in December. Granted, that was before Christmas – when teams are usually not at their best or are learning to play together. But it is still a head to head win. In fact, Drexel leads the country in road wins with 13. Drexel beat Vermont at Vermont (America East regular season champs), Toledo (MAC regular season champs), Syracuse on the road, Villanova on the road and Creighton on the road.

Yes, the Dragons lost to VCU twice and Old Dominion twice. Yes, the Dragons finished one game out of third place (behind Hofstra, whom they split with.) But I would still make the case for Drexel over Hofstra as a third CAA tournament team.

Look, it's not like Drexel went 8-10 in their conference. They went 13-5 in conference play in the 13th best conference in the country. Which doesn't sound like much, but combine a decent conference with a non-conference SOS of 8, and you get what looks like a tournament team to me.

Syracuse's case is complicated. If we were going with the eyeball test, I would have put Syracuse into the field. Normally, 10-6 in the Big East will get you into the tournament. However, the Orange's exclusion from the field shouldn't be that much of a shock once you start to look at the profile.

Two things stand out when you look at Syracuse's record. First, the non-conference RPI and SOS (79 and 122) numbers are not good. In fact, they're pretty poor – although they are actually somewhat comparable to Big East Champion Pittsburgh (63 and 129).

The second issue with Syracuse is that Jim Boeheim's boys did not play a true road game until…January 7th at Marquette. The only two times the Orange left the Carrier Dome they played at Canisius and down at Madison Square Garden. Quite frankly, that's kind of embarrassing.

Maybe the committee was trying to send a message or two by excluding these teams. I don't know, and it is getting to the point that trying to find logic in what the selection committee does appears to be futile.

I'll still watch the tournament. But these issues and a couple of other seeding and geographic problems appear to be marring this event before it even gets started. Here's to hoping for some fabulous games this weekend so the greatest event in sports doesn't become a snoozer.