Expanding NCAA Tournament Will Water Down College Basketball

While talk heats up about expanding the men's NCAA Basketball Tournament from 65 to 96 teams, it's time for the NCAA to look closely at the NBA, to see how letting more teams into post season play has watered down their product.

While the NFL and MLB seem to understand the dangers of letting too many teams into the playoffs, the NBA hasn't grasped the concept, and has devalued the importance of their regular season.

16 of the NBA's 30 teams make the playoffs each year. This has made their regular season almost irrelevant. Many NBA fans consider the playoffs the only games worth watching.

On the contrary, every Sunday is important to almost every one of the NFL's 32 teams; only 12 of them qualify for the post season.

The New York Daily News' Dick "Hoops" Weis reports that "a growing number" of coaches are in favor of expanding the NCAA Tournament field. He and other writers believe that a lot of coaches have backed the idea of expansion to ensure they'll have a better chance of getting in, and subsequently adding to their job security.

What these coaches, and the NCAA, don't understand is that currently the regular season has an importance that is likely to diminish if more teams are allowed to qualify for the post season. The drama of regular season games, especially toward the end of a team's schedule, is still important and exciting.

March Madness, for all intents and purposes, has actually started. As we wind down to the last six or seven games of the season, many teams are in situations that dictate they must perform extremely well, or end up in the NIT, or stay home after their conference tournament is over.

Ruining the excitement of these last couple of games by making it easier for teams to qualify would be detrimental to the great game of college basketball.

With an expansion to 96 teams, the North Carolinas, Connecticuts and the like would be almost certain to gain entrance into the NCAA tournament. As it now stands, they are in desperate fights to win enough meaningful games to qualify. That's exciting! That makes the regular season meaningful!

I'll take it one step further: The NCAA, instead of expanding, should consider cutting the number of teams from 65 to 32. They should think about only letting in conference champions. Can you imagine how much more important each conference game would be?

During the 1970's, when the NCAA Tournament increased the number of teams from 24 to 32, no one imagined that someday the number of entrants would increase to 64. The 32 best teams in the country were all that were necessary to eventually produce a clear-cut national champion.

But as expansion led to 48 and then to 65, the schools, coaches and most fans were sold on the idea of "the more the merrier." The "more" being the more money the networks and the schools could make with more teams. The "merrier" being how happy it made them.

We are at a point now where further expansion of the 65 team field will be destructive to the sport. It will hurt the ratings and turn the regular season into a glorified exhibition season.

Can you imagine the NFL letting more than half of their member teams into the playoffs?  It would ruin what has become the most widely watched sport in the country. 

They are currently considering lengthening their 16 game season to 18 games, but they are not talking about letting more teams into the playoffs. 

The NFL wants to make more money, but they are not going to jeopardize watering down their product; they are too smart.