Big Dance expansion?

[FrazierFanatic]

I may have missed this if it was previously posted, but I saw a couple of mentions that one item on the agenda at the NCAA meetings at the end of June is expansion of the tourney, possibly adding play-in games in each region, or even considering adding an entire extra round and bumping the tourney up to 80 teams. No doubt the majors would push for it, since it would most likely be medicre (or worse) major conference teams that filled many of those spots.

[prhoya]

I would think that CBS would love an extra round of March Madness.

Pretty soon we're going to have a 128-team tournament. Why not?

[AustinHoya03]

I am not for this. During the season, we had a discussion going on which was more important; doing well in the NCAA tournament or winning the BET. Most people said the former, because the latter is "merely a play-in for the NCAA tournament." Expansion of the field past 65 will mean that the conference regular season won't matter to most fans either. When UMD goes .500 in the ACC, the Twerps will be chanting "We'll get 'em in the tournament." Whether it's the BCS in college football or talk of an expanded tournament in basketball, focus is moving away from success locally/regionally/in-conference and toward big, overhyped national events that TV can make moolah off of. A bigger NCAA tournament would make for a more exciting March, but it would also make January and February a complete snooze.

[ephoya04]

Agree 100% with Austin...this would be awful. Winning 6 in a row is hard enough, now you want to add more games? I'd be ok with 1 play in game for each region, but more than that, you kill all the buzz surrounding conference play. This is just a knee-jerk response to Mason making the fluke Final Four run after nearly being left out. For every ONE time that happens, these marginal teams get slaughtered in the first round hundreds of times.

[SFHoya99]

Totally against this.

1. Who needs more mediocre power conference teams in the tourney?
2. Why change what isn't broken? This is a suggestion made by coaches to keep their jobs.
3. Lessens the chance even more that the best team wins. I think the Cinderella factor is high enough right now.
4. Yet another weekend would actually make the tourney less exciting for me. The Final Four is already too much of a letdown, now it is FOUR weekends?

[aggypryd]

I'd like them to go back to the 64 team format.

I think it's absolutely ridiculous to ask two teams that earned their way into the tourney to play an additional game.

If there is a play-in game, it should be between two teams that received at-large bids.

[StPetersburgHoya (Inactive)]

This is why adding the play-in game is rediculous - it sent the message that the NCAA was open to expanding the tournament to teams "worthy" of it. IMHO, this will only water down the competition and make the tournament boring. Its also a big honor to get into the tournament currently - will it feel the same way if there are 16 more teams competing in it?

[HoyaSinceBirth]

yeah i definetly don't want to see the tournament expand much more than it has. I think we should either get rid of the play in game or give one to each reigon but no expansion past that. obviously any expansions is a slippery slope. I also agree that the play in game is kind of unfair to the teams who qualified through an automatic bid. how do the determine who plays in it is it just the two teams tey think were worst or what? does it have to be an automatic bid team?

[FLHoya]

There is of course the "Mason argument"--that a bubble team given a chance can sometimes make a magical run. This is, as someone rightly pointed out, attractive when it happens, so much so that it makes people forget the dozens of times the bubble team gets flattened in the first round. And you could argue Mason wasn't your run of the mill "bubble team"--they had after all been ranked in the Top 25 late in the season before sliding and punching opposing players in conference tournaments.

There's another flip-side to the "Mason argument" for expanding the tourney though. Every year it seems there's at least one "bubble team" who doesn't make the NCAA Tournament, and people whine about how this team got screwed. Well, then that same team goes out, plays heartless, crap basketball and gets beat in the first round of the NIT (see: Maryland, 2006; Tennessee, 2003--on paper it was an "oh, crap" matchup, by the end I felt kinda awkward for the 1,000 or so TN fans who showed up). I know incentive and emotion plays a part in games, but sometimes...dontchaknow...the committee is smarter than you think.

[CAHoya07]

Yeah, I'm against this too, for most of the reasons already mentioned. Six games to win a national championship is already difficult enough, and the games in January and February will mean much less if more teams get in. If you're not one of the top 40 teams or so or if you didn't win your conference tournament, you don't deserve to dance, to have a chance at a national championship. And, you already have the NIT, so 96 teams already play beyond their conference tournaments. I think that's enough.

I think I read in an article that it's unlikely this will happen. If it's not broke, don't fix it.

[EasyEd]

Maybe they should reduce the number of teams to 32 and use a double-elimination for the final eight. Would better ensure the best team won it all.

[Deleted]

frazierfanatic said:

I may have missed this if it was previously posted, but I saw a couple of mentions that one item on the agenda at the NCAA meetings at the end of June is expansion of the tourney, possibly adding play-in games in each region, or even considering adding an entire extra round and bumping the tourney up to 80 teams. No doubt the majors would push for it, since it would most likely be medicre (or worse) major conference teams that filled many of those spots.

Just one man's opinion, but I think if we carry this through to its logical (and I use that term VERY loosely when yapping about the NCAA powers-that-be) conclusion, the NCAA is going to come up with a 256-team tourney at some point in the (however distant) future.

There are 334 teams. The NCAA has already shown they're more about inclusion than exclusion, and expanding to 256 adds only one more Thursday-through-Sunday round and allows for $X million more in revenue... which, after all, is of paramount importance here. Not "student-athletes," are you crazy?!

It still boggles my mind how the NCAA can claim "best interests of our student-athletes" when avoiding a football playoff, yet casts those concerns aside with college hoops.

[Nevada Hoya]

I am with those who are against this idea. The rest of the season has to have some merit. Things are pretty well set right now.

[hoyaboy1]

There are barely 65 teams that I want to see keep playing - who wants to see extra games involving teams 66-128? It's absurd.

[prhoya]

By the way, I was being sarcastic when I wrote about 128 teams. The 64-team format is enough. Who will stop it from going to 80 teams, then 100, then 128???

[CAHoya07]

buffalohoya said:

There are 334 teams. The NCAA has already shown they're more about inclusion than exclusion, and expanding to 256 adds only one more Thursday-through-Sunday round and allows for $X million more in revenue... which, after all, is of paramount importance here. Not "student-athletes," are you crazy?!

It still boggles my mind how the NCAA can claim "best interests of our student-athletes" when avoiding a football playoff, yet casts those concerns aside with college hoops.

The hypocrisy of the NCAA when it comes to football and basketball is pretty apparent here. In college football, only teams from major conferences have a chance to play for the national championship, you have to play just about a perfect season to get there, and sometimes even that isn't enough (see Auburn, 2004 season). They're all about exclusion in football, and seemingly all about inclusion in basketball, whichever makes them the most money. They've forgotten about a little something called integrity in the process, particularly on the football side.

That and your student-athlete argument is pretty strong as well.

[theEDGEfactor]

not for this...but 2 years ago i woulda been

[TigerHoya]

cahoya07 said:

buffalohoya said:

There are 334 teams. The NCAA has already shown they're more about inclusion than exclusion, and expanding to 256 adds only one more Thursday-through-Sunday round and allows for $X million more in revenue... which, after all, is of paramount importance here. Not "student-athletes," are you crazy?!

It still boggles my mind how the NCAA can claim "best interests of our student-athletes" when avoiding a football playoff, yet casts those concerns aside with college hoops.

The hypocrisy of the NCAA when it comes to football and basketball is pretty apparent here. In college football, only teams from major conferences have a chance to play for the national championship, you have to play just about a perfect season to get there, and sometimes even that isn't enough (see Auburn, 2004 season). They're all about exclusion in football, and seemingly all about inclusion in basketball, whichever makes them the most money. They've forgotten about a little something called integrity in the process, particularly on the football side.

That and your student-athlete argument is pretty strong as well.

Inclusion is the name of the game in football too. Hence the extra BCS game because of conferences like the CUSA complaining and saber-rattling about lawsuits.

[Deleted]

tigerhoya said:

Inclusion is the name of the game in football too. Hence the extra BCS game because of conferences like the CUSA complaining and saber-rattling about lawsuits.

But isn't that extra game for the #1 and #2 teams AFTER the first round of BCS games?

Either way, I can't see the BCS idiots taking a Boise State/Marshall/Northern Illinois type over a Florida State/Michigan State/Cal type. The effect of the extra game on the "second tier" conferences is going to be minimal, in my opinion.

[GIGAFAN99]

I'm going to be the only one to say that I'm completely for this. I've said before the format should be the following:

31 auto-bids and top 17 at-large teams are in the top 48

32 other teams make it in the following priority:

Regular-season champs=automatic bid (up to 30 additional possible since the Ivy has no tournament)

Remaining spots filled by at-larges (since some conference champs will overlap this could be 2 more or 32 more)

The first 48 await the winners of the 16 games between the other 32 in a 64-team field.

So the field would differ in several ways. First, the conference season means something because winning it gets you in the dance. Second, the conference tournament means something (and possible even MORE in the major and mid-major conferences) because it means an automatic bid in the final 64 and avoiding a potentially treacherous play-in game.

Scheduling for scenarios could be worked out in advance and possibly all conference tournaments would be forced to end Saturday with selection for Monday's games occurring then (only three end Sunday anyway).

So there you have it. 31 conference champs and between 19 and 49 at-large teams per season (but probably more like the 34 now on average). The regular-season champs don't get screwed and the Big East Tournament for example could actually mean something as opposed to every year when the two teams in the final pretty much know they're in. 'Cuse was probably not a top-17 at-large this year and neither was Pitt so that game would have been huge.

Even better, there's no relegating a team that earned a bid to a play-in game nobody watches. They're automatically in the round of 64. Let the 19th-best at-large team play their way in.

And there is no NIT which the NCAA doesn't care about anyway. Why not?