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Conference ATS Championship: Ohio Valley

By Kota Capper Pace

Posted on March 2, 2023

What if we lived in a sports world where wins and losses were determined by spreads? Sports betting is obviously becoming more mainstream with it being legal in 30 states currently.

Last year around March Madness I had an idea. What if instead of the Big Dance, we had the Big ATS Dance? If a team covers the spread against their opponent they move on to the next round all the way until we have one team left standing. While, this is a fun idea, it presents multiple issues. What if Team A covers the spread as an 18.5-point underdog but doesn’t win the game outright? They’d advance to the next round in the ATS Championship, however, their real season would be over. They’d be bounced out of the March Madness bracket.

So, in the ATS Championship Bracket, we could have one team not even playing anymore this season up against a team trying to advance to the Sweet 16. In the real world, this game wouldn’t even be an actual game. How do we get around that?

Well, for conference tournaments, we could bring the regular season into play.

For example:

St. Francis Brooklyn lost to Fairleigh Dickinson 83-75 on Wednesday but covered +9.5.
In the Northeast Conference ATS Championship, St. Francis Brooklyn advanced.
They’ll take on St. Francis but in real life St. Francis is playing Fairleigh Dickinson.
St. Francis finished 2-0 ATS against St. Francis Brooklyn in the regular season.
- If St. Francis covers against Fairleigh Dickinson they’d advance. If they don’t cover, then we could bring that 2-0 ATS record against St. Francis Brooklyn into play and they’d still advance.

But once we get to our final 68 teams, what happens? Great question.

Well, for now, let’s just focus on finding out who the 2023 Kota Cappers ATS Conference Champions are.