The most obvious reason to leave Arkansas out of NCAA Tournament won't actually matter

I won't make you read another sentence about how deep the SEC is this year — but the SEC is really deep this year. Oh God, I didn't mean to do that, I swear.

But the SEC has been good the past few years, and that hasn't necessarily translated to conference-wide success in the NCAA Tournament. Of course, Alabama was in last year's Final 4, but an SEC team hasn't won the whole thing since Kentucky in 2012.

If we see an SEC wave of success in this year's tourney, it will overall signal a shift from the past three years, when the conference has underperformed relative to expectations.

Arkansas might not deserve a shot, but they'll get one

Maybe it's unfair to say that a conference that has struggled in tournaments of years past should be more heavily scrutinized this year — but Arkansas is likely going to finish 10th or 11th in the SEC, and — despite how deep the conference is — if we have seen the conference struggle in March a few striaght years, are we sure that teams in the bottom half of the conference should be getting at-large bids into the Field of 68?

I'm not attempting to make the argument that the SEC is actually worse than you've been led to believe. I do think this conference is good, and I get that if a conference is good one year, you can't penalize them for underperforming in March in previous years. But if Arkansas — or any of the other middling teams in the SEC — fall short early in the NCAA Tournament, it wouldn't be unprecedented. It would be very precedented, in fact.

John Calipari and Arkansas are probably going to make the NCAA Tournament. Maybe they deserve to, especially in a year with a weak bubble. But if they fall short in March, it might be time to reevaluate how much weight we put on the conference that teams play in, rather than... the team itself.