Jim Boeheim at odds With Jim Calhoun.

In 1985 the NCAA basketball tournament for division one expanded from 52 teams to 64. I have no idea what the general perception was at the time but I could imagine there were some who were against it.

Fast-forward to 2010 and you are more likely to hear a fan bemoan the absence of their team with 20 plus wins from the big dance than “I wish we could go back to the ’85 format”.

Currently there are plans to expand the current format of 64 teams and one play in game to 96 teams.

In the next twenty five years, would anyone care about the current format and its exclusivity? Will the tournament be for everyone and not just the teams with the best records? Will a lower conference team actually win the whole thing? Would it be better victory if a lower conference team win now at the current format or in a format that is geared toward them winning?

Only time will tell but Jim Calhoun, whose team is currently on the bubble, thinks that if it is only a money spinning idea he is against it. He went on to elaborate;

“We’d probably be in a 96-team field but not get into a 65-team field. This might be the year I should really be speaking for it," Calhoun said Saturday. "But I've always felt it's an honour and a privilege to be one of those 65 teams."

Indeed in a world more concerned with political correctness and fairness, the NCAA tournament may be the last great relic where only the best will succeed. There is nothing fair about it. Win you move on. Lose it is home time. No second chance.

Maybe some might have a problem with the selection process where a team from a lower conference could win ninety percent of their conference games and still miss out on a place because they lost the conference tournament.

Like Davidson last year when they failed to win a bid. They did not win the Southern Conference tournament and had to settle for the NIT. This came on the back of a deep run in the 2008 tournament where they made it to the Elite Eight. It was widely expected that they would be back but that was not to be.

One could argue that they had several opportunities to clinch a bid by beating some larger conference teams on their schedule, including Duke (11), but failed. They lost in overtime to Oklahoma (13) with Blake Griffin, by four points. They lost to Purdue (18) on a neutral site by eighteen points.

There is no drama (read excitement) when the projected Final Four teams end up being the final four teams. Some people consider a tournament without any significant upset a boring one. Like last year.

It is no coincidence that one of the most exciting tournaments of the last decade, was in 2006 when eleventh seeded Gorge Mason made it to the final four.

Clearly people are not happy with the current format. Beat enough ranked or higher prestige teams and end up with a winning record and you are in. If this fails and you are lucky enough to have a conference tournament, win this and earn an automatic bid.

In 2007 Jim Boeheim saw a promising season slip away from him but was able to salvage it by winning the Big East tournament and earning an automated bid. So it is an absolute surprise that he would want to demean this by rooting for the 96 team change.

"This year, you're going to see at the end of the year, teams like Connecticut, teams that are really good teams, and North Carolina if they get winning two, three, four games here at the end, you're going to see a lot of teams that look alike, and you're not going to be able to fairly say this team's better, this team should be in. You're not going to be able to do that,” says Boeheim.

"What if Carolina gets it going and somehow wins a couple and then goes in and beats Duke at Duke? It is their fault, but they still can salvage a season and still be a good team and a team that should be a tournament team.

"I think there's going to be too many teams that look exactly alike. I think the last eight teams that get in are going to look just like the last eight teams that get out. To me, that means you need to have an expansion."

It may be that North Carolina’s struggles have brought back some bitter memories for Boeheim but the committee has to take a team’s overall body of work into account and not their last few games.

Connecticut may have strengthened their bid with a recent win over seventh ranked West Virginia however North Carolina has to do a lot more work to be considered. They can still win the ACC tournament as they only have a few more games left including the season end show down with Duke.

As the saying goes – change is inevitable- so there is a good chance that this new tournament format will come to pass. I personally have no problem with the current format but will have to accept the change.

Even Jay Wright a perennial contender is for this, even though it means that in order to win his team may have to play more than six games to get to the championship. He says:

"When I first became a Division I head coach, I think there were 297 teams. And now there are 347, and the tournament stayed the same size. The game has grown, all of the conferences have grown, the mid-major programs have grown. There's just so many more good teams out there. I just think it's time and I'm really excited that we're considering it."