First off, welcome to the new Star Tribune web site -- and the new RandBall look. You'll probably find the look to be cleaner, the functionality to (hopefully) be better and the level of sarcasm to be about the same. Oh, and a new picture. Always a new picture. Never a full smile. Hopefully it's not as jarring as the great system migration of 2009. But we'd like your feedback nonetheless! It's only appropriate that the first post of the new look was sparked by a classic e-mail from veteran reader and contributor Jon Marthaler. In fatalist language that only The Marth can deliver, he had this to say:

I'd like to see a discussion of the following statement: "So the national champ is a team that finished in a three-way tie for ninth in its conference. Remind me how this is more fair than the BCS?"

Since we were already thinking about last night's game -- Butler might have only shot 18.8 percent, but the zinger crowd on Twitter was firing at around 53 percent -- we decided to build on Marthaler's e-mail.

A great deal of what makes the NCAA men's hoops tournament, in theory, such an exciting showcase is the unpredictability of it all. Sixty-eight teams now get in. Upsets are going to happen. It's very focused on the here and now -- how well can you play for this handful of games?

But we also saw the tournament's fatal flaw last night. While Butler and UConn earned their way into the title game by advancing through a small sample size window, they clearly were not the two best college basketball teams in the country. And it showed with a ragged, awful game that might go down as the worst final ever. Both teams had it within them to play much better; but the title game would have had a better chance to be a wonderfully played epic if it had been, say, Ohio State vs. Kansas. Those great teams lost once when it mattered most. Poof. Gone.

The BCS in college football, of course, creates artificial order out of real chaos -- like a system that ranks plastic bags by which ones happen to be swept up highest by the wind. It pokes and prods every team, then spits out numbers that say only this team or that team can be the national champion. But even with its convoluted ways, the BCS does reward body of work. While it's punitive in a different way -- possibly one, almost certainly two losses along the way will put a team out of the running for a title -- it does ensure the teams left standing are, if not conclusively the two best, among the very best.

You will never see a team that finished in a three-way tie for ninth place win a BCS championship (sorry, Gophers). You will sometimes see two of college basketball's top three or four teams play in the NCAA title game; you will always see that in a BCS title game.

Which is more fair, Mr. Marthaler? Probably the NCAA tournament. For the teams that make it, it's a truly democratic way of crowning a winner vs. the two-party system of the BCS (hey, you had a close loss in Iowa? Sorry, you can at least be the Vice President/play in the Sugar Bowl).

You won't always be able to say the NCAA basketball champion was the best team for the entire year, but no matter how ugly the finish, you will always be able to say they earned it -- and that anyone else who thought they deserved a better fate had a chance to create their own destiny but failed.

Your thoughts, as always, in the comments.