NCAA BB: Step away from a 96 team Tourney

If you are a football fan yesterday’s game between the New York Jets and the Indianapolis Colts should have made you mad. Mad for the fact that one team was handed a “gimme game” while the other will not suffer any repercussion for it. But this is a North Carolina blog, and while I do look at the Heels in the Pro, why am I talking about a game between the Jets and the Colts? Simply put because this game is the best example to show how expanding the NCAA Tournament from 64/65 to 96 would be a huge mistake. One that could easily bring the same feeling of “being robbed” as the game played in Indy yesterday afternoon.

Without a doubt the top teams in college basketball would still be playing all out for the season, since the #1 rank (or 2nd and 3rd) is something all teams want. But what about those teams that know that they are in, and also know winning one more game or not (in the conference tournament) isn’t going to help them move up? Why would they give it their all during the week before March Madness? And so, most likely, you are going to see many games during tournament week between teams that know that they are in and teams that need one or two extra wins in order to get in. What am I saying? A team that has 20 wins going into the 64/65 team tournament with a pair of players that are not at their best is going to have to still fight through it and try win anyways, because 20 games doesn’t garuantee anything right now. And an early lose to an inferior opponent might just keep them out of the big dance.

But if the tournament was enlarged to 96 teams that same team might just choose to sit their two players and think about the future more than winning the game. Now you are going to say “how many times could this happen in a season?” And to that I say: if it happens once it’s already too many times. If you don’t believe me just look at what the Jets/Colts game is stirring up. I doubt anyone would want that for the best tournament in any sport. In the end, who is going to really lose out will be the smaller conferences, which will be overlooked for teams from the BCS conferences. If we go to 96 teams and these gimme games happen that will happen a lot more than it does now.

We all know that putting an extra 50% of teams is going to dilute the talent base, but with the example I just shown you it’s going to get even worst, as some teams aren’t going to get in because they had to play out their whole season, while others might get one or two freebies. The beauty of this tournament is that it’s big but it’s also made for the ones that deserve it, let’s keep it that way by not pushing the number of teams to close to 100. Let’s also keep the regular season as true as possible by keeping March Madness to 64/65 teams, anything more it’s going to ruin it for at least a handful team each and every year and we will all suffer for it.