Selection to the NCAA Men's Basketball tournament is an incredible moment for fans, players, and universities alike. To aid in the selection process, the NCAA has identified 7 metrics that it considers alongside a team's wins and losses to determine the best 37 at-large teams for the NCAA Tournament.

One of those metrics, KPI is fraught with problems, both large and small. While the mathematical issues with this metric, and the way the math bears little relation to anything you might want to measure when considering resume quality, are too deep and intricate to get into now.

However, KPI's biggest flaw is that KPI stands for Kevin Pauga Index, after its creator. Mr. Pauga is an Associate Athletic Director for Michigan State University, who plays in the B1G aka Big Ten conference.

If you're saying to yourself, "gee, that seems like a massive, gaping conflict of interest," you'd be right! It is absolutely a massive conflict of interest to have a metric used to determine the field for the NCAA tournament--and for countless other sports as well, where it is plagued by the same conflict of interest and mathematical issues--controlled by the associate AD at a school with a vested interest in the outcome of the metric. Literally millions of dollars of tournament units flow into conference coffers to be distributed to schools as a result of how many teams make the NCAAT and how far they go. That's certainly sufficient motive to rig the metric.

Of course we do not know if Mr. Pauga is rigging the metric to favor the Big Ten, but at current, it does not look good: only one conference has more than 50% of its teams overvalued by the KPI metric. If you guessed the B1G aka the Big Ten, you're correct! The Big Ten has 94.44% (17 of 18) of its teams OVERVALUED by a metric controlled by an Associate AD at a Big Ten school. The next most overvalued conference is the SEC, which has only 50% of its teams overvalued (8/16).

Further more, my analysis of outliers has demonstrated that 10 of the 13 biggest outliers, where KPI is the better metric are teams from the Big Ten. Feels worth noting at this point that Kevin Pauga does not appear to have any formal mathematical training, as he was a journalism major according to his MSU bio. The plot just keeps thickening in the sketchiest ways. (I should add I too am not a mathematician, but I have done extensive research over the last year and basically re-taught myself high school statistics to wind up at a point where I feel confident in my analysis).

With March now upon us, the time to act is now. We need the NCAA to remove KPI from the team sheet until it can be investigated. At the very least, we need the NCAA to show some transparency with KPI, given the open and obvious conflict of interest that Kevin Pauga has in connection with his day job and the KPI metric.