The BCS is moronic and the seeding for the men's basketball tournament is often flawed.

But when I saw the NCAA Div. I women's soccer tournament brackets come out, I was dumbfounded.

The difference between the men's basketball tournament and women's soccer is that there are host sites in the first round where four teams, including the host, play.

But still, see if anomalies like these would float in the heavily scrutinized men's basketball tournament. Pepperdine, a No. 3 seed, is not hosting and instead must travel to Marquette in Wisconsin. No. 18 Nebraska must travel to Villanova for its first-round game. Last but not least, No. 12 Penn State will travel to No. 17 Maryland for a first-round match against Princeton.

How this is possible?

Penn State women's soccer coach Paula Wilkins said that the seeding committee for the tournament does not look at the rankings at all and instead looks at win-loss record, strength of schedule, record on road, record at home, head-to-head, and record against opponents that are in the tournament.

Okay, fine, I'll buy that, go ahead and throw out the national rankings, but please stay consistent. Of course, entirely different reasoning is used in the case of determining who gets home games. Things like convenience, making less teams travel, and probably something like team GPA come into the equation. They might as well look at GPA, since there is no guarantee that good teams will be rewarded with home games. They penalize them for not having enough teams close to them to come and play.

Imagine you are Pepperdine's coach and you get this phone call: "Hey Pepperdine, this is the NCAA. You are 16-1-2 and we would like to congratulate you on your No. 3 seed and by the way, here are the directions to Wisconsin."

No big deal, right? At least every team in your bracket is from Wisconsin and they will get to be all cozy at home.

I find Penn State's situation even funnier because the Lions will be traveling to Maryland. Now I know most of you will say, "Hey, they blew a three-goal lead in a first-round Big Ten tournament game against a team not even in the NCAA tournament. They deserve whatever happens to them."

It most likely has nothing to do with their loss in the Big Ten women's soccer tournament, but men's soccer. (You are reading that correctly, I haven't started to tip back a glass of beverage yet.) Penn State men's soccer is hosting the Big Ten tournament and that means that to have Penn State host the women's, it would have had to play on the off day of the Big Ten tournament, Saturday, and Monday. The committee made only one exception for a different opening-round date: the Brigham Young site plays games today and Saturday instead of Friday and Sunday. So even if Penn State ran the Big Ten tournament table, who is to say that it would have gotten to host anyway?

I mean, that is all that could possibly be stopping Happy Valley from hosting because Penn State has already beaten Maryland this year, has a much better win-loss record, a higher national ranking and a higher regional ranking. The Lions currently have an 18-game winning streak at Jeffrey Field. The only thing Maryland has going for them is 0-1-1 record against North Carolina.

The last thing that baffles my mind is that only the top eight teams are seeded and protected from having tough first-round matchups, which means the Lions could have conceivably played the Terrapins in the first round.

My proposal is simple -- seed the top 16 teams, having four seeded teams in each region. Each of those four teams are the host sites in the region and from there, fill those sites with teams closest to the host. If there are not enough, then a lesser team from across the United States should be the one to travel. If they cannot afford it or do not want to travel, then they forfeit their spot. The higher seeds then continue to hold home field in the region as long as they advance. You then can keep the normal neutral site for the College Cup.

This way teams like Portland and Brigham Young, and Maryland and Penn State don't butt heads until the Sweet 16, as opposed to the second round.

Penn State's journey begins tomorrow in College Park, Md.; the Lions don't have an 18-game winning streak there.