Find yourself unsure on this issue, flip-flopping between solutions, wondering what is really best for the sport?

So is everybody else. Personally, I've taken about eights "stands" on this and still don't know what I think. Last year's top-16 seeds all advancing got everybody (except those seeds) upset, and now there's a proposal on the table for one of the incomprehensible levels of the NCAA bureaucracy to possibly rule on in April.

It would get a little closer to so-called neutral courts, but would it be any more fair or better for the sport? Schools could bid to be subregional hosts, and those sites would be predetermined. A school couldn't be a host more than two years in a row.

"How do you get a neutral site out of a system like that?" Georgia's Andy Landers said on an SEC coaches' teleconference Monday. "My reaction is somewhat disbelief. What the committee basically has done is say, 'We're not going to reward teams for their play by giving them a home-court advantage, but we will reward you if you have enough money to buy it.' "

I don't think that was the intention, but Landers has an excellent point.

An argument for having the top-16 seeds host has been that they did, to a large degree, earn that right over the season. Iowa State coach Bill Fennelly likens it to NFL teams earning home-field advantage for the playoffs up until the Super Bowl.

It's a good analogy up to a point. But NFL teams come closer to truly deciding that with their records -- yes, their schedules make a difference, but they are not subject to a selection committee trying to decide between multiple teams that could all conceivably qualify to get one of those crucial top-16 seeds.

Further, women's basketball -- fairly or not -- will always get compared to men's basketball. That tournament's makeup and results are what many folks want to use as a measuring stick for the women's tournament.

We all know the problems with those comparisons, not the least of which is that nobody was comparing the men's tournament to anything else when it was just 19 years old.

That's the way it is, though. There really aren't quite as many upsets -- especially when you get past the early rounds -- in the men's tournament as everyone tends to think there are. The favorites generally win there, too.

But there enough -- and last year's upset-heavy men's early rounds compared to the generally predictable women's early rounds provided a striking contrast -- that having neutral sites has become what a tournament is "supposed" to be like to most people.

The key is, the women's game cannot try to please people who don't really care about it anyway. I've gotten e-mail from people saying the women's tournament is a joke because of the lack of neutral sites in early rounds.

Most of the time, these are people who think the women's game is a joke, period. They don't watch it and wouldn't if the tournament were played at neutral sites or not.

What the tournament has to do is what's best for the game itself, the fans it has and the fans it can realistically expect to attract in the near future.

And so what is the answer?

Oklahoma coach Sherri Coale, in her first NCAA Tournament, had to laugh when asked what she thought.

"I would guess everybody 5-and down wants it to be at a neutral sites and 4-and-up likes it at home," she said.

Indeed, when this issue is discussed, it can remind me of the "diversity issue" in the my business, journalism. It's funny how many times you'll hear a 40-something white male boss at a newspaper saying in a meeting that "there are too many people who look like me in positions of authority in the media. We have to become more diverse."

Of course, you always want to ask whether he'll be the first to step aside from his job should a quality "diverse" candidate be ready to take it. Or if he doesn't expect his son, grandson, great-grandson, etc. to get just as far up the ladder as he did.

Those ladders only have so many rungs, you know.

The truth is, if you want to climb in anything and you're way down the ladder with a lot of people in front of you, you have to work harder, catch a few breaks and be prepared for lots of disappointments.

The coaches of teams usually seeded in the 5-16 range know that.

Now, here's a problem that happens in my business sometimes, maybe yours, too. People are promoted before they're ready for it because they fit a "diverse" category, and that makes "non-diverse" folks high in the bureaucracy look good. Too often, though, those promoted get no real help and guidance into how to actually get better at their jobs. Then they're easy targets, become defensive and either stay in their positions as perceived failures or get out of the business.

Then the folks up at the top just go through the cycle again. It's easy to promote people; it's very hard work to truly develop them.

Passing this current "bid" proposal might be seen as an easy way to make a step toward true neutral sites one day. The hard part will be trying to really make that a fairer system, perhaps by insisting that schools can be hosts but not on their home floors -- instead maybe a relatively-nearby neutral facility.

Again, that makes things harder -- because the schools may have to work more to sell those tickets. And let's face it -- how different will Hartford Civic Center be than Gampel Pavilion to a visiting team facing UConn, for example?

The answer is, maybe not much, but at least it's not the building UConn gets to practice in every day. That's not neutral, but it would a step if neutrality is what the women's game really wants.

Coale added that she thinks that many coaches are actually able to step back and see what's good for the women's game rather than just what's good for themselves. And, indeed, women's basketball probably has more of those types of coaches than men's hoops or college football -- if for no other reason than pragmatism on the part of the coaches.

But it really takes everybody -- coaches, administrators and fans -- to not only make any changes work but to improve what the game already has.