NCAA Tournament Expansion: Who Does It Help and Hurt?

With reports surfacing about a possible NCAA basketball tournament expansion, it got me thinking about all the possible expansion ideas.

Obviously, expanding to 96 teams would add dozens of extra—and unnecessary—games to the month already dubbed "March Madness," thus creating an even larger profit for the successful teams—and, more importantly, the corporations responsible for televising the games.

But how would this change affect the rest of college basketball?

First, it appears that adding 32 extra teams to the "Big Dance" would effectively ruin the regular season in college basketball. Teams already confident in their rosters could coast through the season, dropping games when they simply do not feel like playing and making their only goal to get to the tournament healthy.

One reason the NCAA Tournament is so effective is because each game, aside from the top seeds in the first round, is competitive and can be won by either team. When you add extra teams, you make the first three rounds predictable—and, therefore, not worth watching.

Instead of the No. 1 overall seed Kentucky Wildcats being upset in a nail-biter to the UAB Blazers in the second round of the 2004 tournament, fans would have had to wait potentially 10 extra days to have seen that potential match-up.

But what is another change the NCAA could make to the tournament?

One that would seem to help all parties would be to give automatic bids to the regular season conference champions rather than those teams who win their respective leagues' conference tournaments.

This would help the NCAA because viewers would rather tune in to teams who were better during a three-month period before slipping up in a three-day tournament than a team who was a laugher during the regular season and got lucky for a weekend in early March.

Take last season, for example.

Mississippi State, although nothing short of average during the regular season, found a way to win the SEC Conference Tournament last season, knocking out a team like Davidson, which was ranked for a large part of the season but ran into a buzzsaw in its conference tourney.

So instead of watching the always-entertaining Stephen Curry light up the nets, America watched Mississippi State lose in a blowout to Washington.

Had the bid gone to Davidson, odds are they would have received a higher seed than Mississippi State did (12), and the game would have most likely been more competitive.

This change, despite how minor it may seem, would help weed out the skillful teams from the lucky ones—and further improve the already highly competitive NCAA Tournament.

It would also end the ridiculous discussion of expanding the 64-team field.