March Madness

[smalls]

Any comments on the talk about expanding to a 96-team tournament?

I despise the idea. We don't need even more teams from the bottom 1/2 of the power conferences to make the tourney, which is what I fear will be happening.

But, it seems that it is all but inevitable that the NCAA is going to make this jump (their PR machine has been burning the midnight oil for 3 months on it now). I hope that instead of opening up the at-large bid process they include a auto-bid provision for including the regular season champ from each conference in the tourney. Often times some really good mid-major teams get left out of the big dance when they are upset in their respective conference tourneys. By doing this one could fill a max 31 of the additional 32 teams (let's say the play-in game goes away) through the regular season champ. Granted, many teams win their both the regular season and conference tourney and any of the power conference regular season winners would have gotten an at-large bid despite their tourney performance, so you are still in essence expanding the number of available at-large bids (which will be needlessly wasted on 3rd tier teams like Minnesota, Illinois, Mississippi St., Ole Miss and a glut of others who have no business being invited to the big dance).

If, I mean when, it happens I hope that picking a 64-team bracket remains the status quo. Even as a die hard college hoops fan, choosing that many games between mediocre teams becomes less and less interesting.

 

[1_pointer]

One thing I'm afraid of is that a 96 team tournament would reduce the importance of the regular season even more.

 

[Oak]

Looks like they're adding three teams...

INDIANAPOLIS -- The NCAA's Board of Directors has approved the new 68-team men's basketball tournament that will begin next season.

It's the first expansion since 2001 when the tourney went from 64 to 65 teams.

How the new format will work isn't likely to be determined until this summer, when the men's basketball issues committee meets. It is believed the tourney will include four opening-round games, often called play-in games, instead of the one that has been used since 2001.

The NCAA recommended the expansion last week, when it also announced it had reached a new 14-year, $10.8 billion television package with CBS and Turner Broadcasting to broadcast the NCAA's marquee event.