Notre Dame is one team that could afford a 12- or 13-loss season because of a hefty in-conference schedule.

Let’s look at Notre Dame. The Irish are 12-5. They’ve got nice wins over Texas and Georgetown, but there’s not much more outside of those two W’s. The upcoming schedule sees them playing at home against Connecticut and Marquette, then on the road at always-tough-to-steal-a-W Pittsburgh. If the Irish can’t get a win in those three games (and it’s entirely possible they won’t), they will have lost five straight, dating back to recent losses to Syracuse and Louisville.

Yet, with a 12-8 record, they’d probably still be put on the better side of the bubble on the first day of February. Why?Simple: They play in the Big East. A certain kind of momentum from preseason into March can carry a conference. Say what you will, but the Big East, Big Ten and ACC have been inheritors of Tournament bids from good reputations in year’s past. Notre Dame’s SOS will constantly keep its RPI above 35. And while the RPI has been diminished, it’s still a stat that carries a lot of weight on television shows and in prognosticator’s columns. Such media inevitably hits the eyes of those on the committee and can influence votes.

So will the reputation of the Big East affect the selection committe’s process? The committee claims it does not look at conference affiliation. This notion is simply hard to digest. Especially this year. There has never been a conference like the Big East in 2008-09 before. Ten teams, 12 if you want to get liberal and put in Cinci and Providence, will be in the Tournament discussion.

The committee will be judged closely and fastidiously on what it does this year with this conference. Notre Dame may bounce back and put itself in a position where it can get to 20 wins and wipe out this question of “Should they be in?” But if it’s not them, it will be someone else. There will be one or two teams from this conference with .500 or sub-.500 records that may get in, while another school — one with five more wins and a much better conference record — gets left out.

It’s then we’ll have Dick Vitale screaming at us at 8:45 on Selection Sunday night via satellite in his Tampa home; Jay Bilas giving that all-too-polite-yet-stern commentary on which teams qualify. (Remember: “Who did you play, and who did you beat?”) In a year where mid-majors are struggling to even stay on the bubble, the Big East could bully its way into the Tournament with more than half the teams in its mammoth 16-team league while other teams have shown more consistency without the benefit of such a gauntlet.

Prepare to see a team that is struggling, and perhaps not deserving of a bid, be camoflouaged by a schedule that doubles as a get-out-of-NIT-free card.

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