NCAA Is Like Your Little League Coach, Wants Everybody To Play

I just reread a good article from Washington Post columnist Tracee Hamilton regarding the NCAA's possible expansion of the men's basketball tournament to include 96 teams. 

She makes excellent points on how the expansion would weaken the tournament, allow teams with fewer quality wins to enter the fray, and would give the top eight seeds in each bracket a bye, thereby making the initial week of the tournament a giant snoozefest (really, does anyone want to see a No. 16 seed take on a No. 24 seed for the right to be destroyed by a one seed the next week? I think I can find plans for that day).

I guess this is just part of the great NBA-ification of the college game. In order to miss the NBA playoffs, it's not enough to simply be bad, you have to be abysmal. In the NCAA's there was always the chance that a team with a sub-.500 record might sneak into the big dance by winning its conference tournament, but if the NCAA has it's way, that team may very well get in anyway.

How is that going to effect the conference tournaments? For one thing, a lot of teams will not feel as much pressure to have a strong showing in the hopes it may improve their cachet with the selection committee. So what if you're a four seed in the PAC 10 tournament? The NCAA will have to get its teams from somewhere. So what if you had a creampuff preconference schedule, and only won a half dozen of your conference games? Those 16 or 17 wins will propel you into a 23 seed in the tournament. 

What disturbs me the most is that expanding the field detracts from what I consider the prestige of the tournament. In the film The Incredibles , the evil villain Syndrome plans to sell super-hero technology to the common folk. He says, "Everyone can be super. And when everyone's super, no one will be." 

That's the way the tournament field will appear when Popcorn U starts showing up there year after year. In the past, the sports world got excited when a higher seeded team made it to the sweet sixteen or beyond, but under the NCAA's plan it's going to be hard to be a Cinderella with all those ugly stepsisters stomping on your feet in their plexiglass slippers.

Also, take into consideration how this will influence the office pools. There's already a serious loss in productivity the week before the tournament starts. Filling out a 96 team bracket? Not only would the country be ripe for invasion, but the myriad cases of eyestrain that would result from having the whole bracket crammed onto one sheet of paper may bankrupt our already fragile healthcare system. 

The NCAA seems to be of the opinion that more teams means more media revenue.  They say that it gives an opportunity for mid-majors to get involved. Well, that's great and all, but one of the reasons mid-majors aren't majors is because they don't have the fanbase to begin with. 

Does the NCAA think that Nobody Tech's boosters are going to travel the way, say, Kentucky's does?  A lot of these teams have difficulty filling their 1,500-seat gymnasiums during the regular season, and many of them give tickets away, or sell them for practically nothing.

These folks are not going to travel halfway across the country if they won't even go across town. So that leaves the NCAA with three-quarter empty arenas for the first round. That's really going to look good for the franchise. As for revenue, who the hell is going to watch Eastern Allegheny against Appalachian Methodist? Isn't there a Cougar Town rerun that night?

Fortunately, I have a solution. Actually, I have a couple of them. The first is to simply increase the number of play-in games from one to four, one for each regional. That gives the NCAA tournament another day to sell, gives three more bubble teams the chance to play their way in, and would add a little touch of drama to the proceedings, without making the whole thing look so bloated.  

The other solution is to keep everything the same until the Final Four, then make those last three matchups a best of three series. That way the NCAA will get at least six, with the potential of nine, huge games with top tier talent playing their hearts out. Can you imagine the ratings and the attendance for a UK-KU three game series?  

Another benefit is that it would resolve a lot of questions regarding who really is the premiere team.  Even the best may drop one game, but in a two-out-of-three format, the cream would typically rise to the top. 

You don't have to thank me, NCAA. Maybe you could just change the name of the MVP award to the "U DaMann" award.

It's only a suggestion.