Nice summary Va.
There’s also merit in discussing why 20 wins no longer matters. Namely, expansion means the league schedules are now so imbalanced that you can’t simply combine the 20 wins with 9-7 to pad your resume. Several ACC teams over the years — including a couple of Herb’s teams — got at-large bids at 7-9; but until a few years ago only one or two had ever been snubbed at 9-7. Now, there’s a big difference between a 20-win, 9-7 team that only plays (and loses to) Syracuse, Duke and Virginia once this year and a .500 team that plays each of them (and perhaps splits with some of them) twice.
My favorite over the past few years has been ESPN’s insistence on touting a bubble team’s BPI, which is a stat it made up because it thinks the RPI is too simplistic. Never mind that the selection committee doesn’t factor in BPI and still uses RPI because it is, in fact, simplistic.
