INDIANAPOLIS (AP) – In response to demands from coaches and fans of college basketball, as well as rising rancor from media coverage of the sport, the NCAA promised that it would make changes to the way in which college basketball chooses its national champion starting in 2009.

“We didn’t want to throw away seventy years of tradition on a whim, but tension against the tournament-style format has been building for years,” said NCAA President Myles Brand on Monday morning after a three-hour meeting with university presidents. “Ultimately, we think that it is time that college basketball came into agreement with our other major revenue sport so that the fans can finally be satisfied with end-of-season matchups that are both satisfying and will conclusively determine the best team in the sport.”

The new Poll of Objective and Observable Percentages (POOP) system*, designed by ACC Commissioner and BCS President John Swofford and a team of trained monkeys, is based on the successful Bowl Championship Series used in Division I-A football. Teams will be rated on a weekly basis, starting Jan. 1 of each year / season. The rankings will take into account three factors: the team’s rank in the Ratings Percentage Index (RPI), the team’s rank in the ESPN/USA Today Coaches’ Poll, and the team’s average rating across eight computer-based ranking systems. Each of these three sources will be treated equally, and the average of the three values will constitute the team’s straight POOP score.

“Our hope is that by using POOP to determine who plays for the national championship, rather than the current haphazard system of the NCAA tournament, we’ll be able to restore some normalcy to the proceedings,” said Swofford. “I mean, the whole March Madness name is a double-edged sword, ya know?”

If the new system were in use this year, North Carolina and UCLA, both losers in this year’s national semifinals, would have played for the national title. Coaches for both teams admitted they favored the new system.

“I just believe that for our championship to be legitimate, it has to reward three things: victory, no matter how unimpressive the margin; winning your conference, as long as it is a major one; and gritty defense and athleticism,” said UCLA coach Ben Howland. “All this “winning when it matters” crap is meaningless. For our regular season to matter, we had to make some changes.”

Under the new system, National finalists Kansas and Memphis would have instead played in separate exhibition games, with the Jayhawks facing the Louisville Cardinals and the Tigers playing the Duke Blue Devils. Two additional exhibition games, for a total of four beyond the championship matchup itself, will also be played under the POOP system. This year, those games woudl have pitted Tennessee against Georgetown and Wisconsin against Texas.

Complaints about the current tournament system began in earnest in 2005, when George Mason University, a member of the Colonial Athletic Association, qualified for the Final Four by defeating Michigan State, North Carolina, Wichita State, and Connecticut. Coaches of those teams complained that the Patriots were undeserving national semifinalists, even though Mason had accomplished a better regular season record than all save Connecticut.

“What the f***? George Mason? So now we’re letting founding fathers play for the championship,” said Connecticut coach John Calhoun at the time. “This has become an absolute joke.”

The grumblings of coaches and fans rose to an uproar after Duke, previously a perennial contender, lost in the first round of last year’s tournament to upstart Virginia Commonwealth University, also from the Colonial Athletic.

“**** **** TOURNAMENT **** **** RICHMOND ****,” said Blue Devil coach Mike Krzyzewski. “***** FLOORSLAPPERS **** ******* HEWLETT-PACKARD **** DONKEY **** CHARACTER ***** ***** BASKETBALL **** **** SHOE POLISH.”

The final straw, however, appears to be the inclusion of Memphis, the sole team in the tournament from the weak Conference USA, in the sport’s championship game tonight.

“Those daggum teams – the George Masons, the Memphisessses – haven’t done a daggum thing to earn their spot at the table,” said North Carolina coach Roy Williams, whose Tar Heels lost in this year’s national semifinals but would have qualified for the POOP Championship game under the new system. “I don’t give a damn about them. I just care about these boys in front of me now, and how they should have been handed the opportunity to play for the title, rather than earning it on the court.”

Not everyone is happy with the changes. Coaches of so-called “mid-major” programs say that the new system essentially destroys any chance for such programs to win a national championship. Already, some of these coaches, including Gonzaga’s Mark Few, Creighton’s Dana Altman, Xavier’s Sean Miller, and Davidson’s Bob McKillop have called for a boycott of the system.

Would I lie to you?

“[A boycott] is just ridiculous,” said Swofford when informed of the team’s plans. “They have just as much chance as anyone else of making it to one of our premier games. And even if they do not qualify for the POOP games, they could still participate in tournament-style play through the National Invitation Tournament and the new College Basketball Invitational. I guess I just don’t see the argument that this is bad for the sport.”

Some fans have questioned the motives of the NCAA in making the switch at this time. “Why would they throw away seventy years of tradition, and a format the everyone loves, just to create this new system?” asked Rob Johnson, a college basketball fan in Muncie, Ind. “I mean, what a sham. Clearly, they are just trying to make more money.”

Swofford and Brand similarly rejected these claims. “Ultimately, a big factor in this decision was academics,” said Brand. “The current system keeps the winning players away from their classes for up to three weeks beyond the end of the regular season and conference tournaments. Under POOP, these players will have a significant amount of time off between the regular season and their POOP game in which they can catch up in their classes.” POOP games will be scheduled for late April and early May, which conflict with final exams at many institutions.

Representatives from CBS, which broadcasts the Division I Me’s Basketball Championship for the NCAA, were unable to be reached for comment on Monday. In a statement, however, the network said that it looked forward to being able to assign Jim Nantz and Billy Packer, its lead college basketball announcing team, to all of the POOP games next year, while assigning fan favorite Gus Johnson to the Masters golf tournament.

* – Yeah, we made a POOP joke. You love it.