Not your father's regional tournament ...

I debuted this a year ago, and once again, I want to demonstrate a proposal to revamp regional tournaments all across the state.

The premise is that district tournaments have almost become obsolete. They're generally money-makers for the participating schools, but there are times they conspire to keep the best eight teams from making the regional tournament.

Case in point: the Fourth District, which has four of the top six girls' teams in the First Region. We've known all season that two of them will automatically fail to reach the regional tournament, simply because of geography.

I realize that fans of smaller schools will argue that my proposal favors the larger schools, and in some ways it possibly does. Still, as a basketball fan, I would rather have a system that sees the best eight teams make it to the regional tournament, or at least get as close to that as we possibly can.

And this proposal also features some safeguards to help the smaller schools.

This is how I would propose it would work for the First Region, which has four four-team districts, all of which are seeded based on regular-season results.

To reward the top seeds in each district, the four No. 1 seeds will be seeded 1-4 in for the regional tournament. Likewise, the four No. 2 seeds will be ranked in the 5-8 spots. The rest of the field is seeded 9-16.

I would propose that the seedings be made via a vote of the region's coaches, although Travis Turner, who hosts a daily sports show on WOFC-AM in Murray and has myself as a regular weekly guest, has offered the services of he and I to be the seeding committee.

Yeah, like I don't have enough headaches.

Here's how the seedings would look on the boys' side. These aren't necessarily my rankings, but a guess on how the process would play out:

1. Paducah Tilghman
2. Graves County
3. Marshall County
4. Fulton County
5. Carlisle County
6. Heath
7. Calloway County
8. Mayfield
9. Ballard Memorial
10. Murray
11. St. Mary
12. Lone Oak
13. Fulton City
14. Hickman County
15. Community Christian
16. Reidland

The top seeds would serve as "district tournament" hosts. First-round winners would qualify for the regional tournament. The second-round games would effectively serve as "district championships," with the "district champions" guaranteed to meet a "district runner-up" in the first round of the regional tournament.

That gives us these matchups:
• at Fulton County — Fulton County vs. Fulton City, Carlisle County vs. Lone Oak
• at Paducah Tilghman — Paducah Tilghman vs. Reidland, Mayfield vs. Ballard Memorial
• at Graves County — Graves County vs. Community Christian, Calloway County vs. Murray
• at Marshall County — Marshall County vs. Hickman County, Heath vs. St. Mary

Once the first two rounds are played, the regional tournament pairings are determined by blind draw, with teams that played in the "district championship games" placed in opposite brackets.

For example, let's say Marshall County and Heath played in the "district title game" ... those two teams would be placed in opposite brackets to ensure they wouldn't meet each other again so soon.

On the girls' side, the seedings look something like this:

1. Calloway County
2. Heath
3. Graves County
4. Hickman County
5. Murray
6. Ballard Memorial
7. Paducah Tilghman
8. Fulton County
9. Community Christian
10. Marshall County
11. St. Mary
12. Lone Oak
13. Carlisle County
14. Mayfield
15. Reidland
16. Fulton City

And the first-round matchups:
• at Hickman County — Hickman County vs. Carlisle County, Murray vs. Lone Oak
• at Heath — Heath vs. Reidland, Paducah Tilghman vs. Marshall County
• at Graves County — Graves County vs. Mayfield, Ballard Memorial vs. St. Mary
• at Calloway County — Calloway County vs. Fulton City, Fulton County vs. Community Christian

Not every region has the same setup, and it would be up to each region to determine how its teams are seeded.

Comments, anyone?