NCAA Tournament Expansion Is on the Horizon, So Get Used To It

Bob Knight has weighed in on it. Dick Vitale has talked about it. Now the movers and shakers are considering it. Might as well get used to it. The NCAA is going to get bigger.

Remember when there was talk about running stock cars at Indy? That was once considered blasphemy. Now it's called the Brickyard 400.

Remember when the Rose Bowl was not part of the BCS? That's because the thought of some SEC school or Big 12 school playing in it was considered blasphemy. But now Oklahoma has been there, Texas has been there. No big deal.

Remember when there was first talk of Inter-league Play in Major League Baseball? That was considered an abomination. Now that is the best part of the regular season.

The point is that nothing is sacred. Not in sports anyway. Things change all the time. The NCAA Tournament Bracket of 64 has to be changed. The question is now how much?

The NCAA Division I Basketball has ballooned up to 347 schools now. 65 teams making the playoffs is about one in five. The NBA has 30 teams. 16 of them make the playoffs. MLB has 30 teams. Eight make the playoffs. That's about one in four. The NFL has 32 teams. 12 make the playoffs. That's one in three.

So the NCAA expanding would not be the worst thing to ever happen in sports. IF it's done the right way. Doubling the size would be wrong in my opinion. Even if it only adds one more round to expand to 128, it would do more damage to the game then good.

If the tournament was expanded to 128, that would include the 65 already in, the 32 that are in the NIT and you still need 30 more teams. North Carolina is in the NIT at 16-16! UConn is in at 17-15! Both just got beat in the first games of their conference tournament. There are many who feel they do not deserve to still be playing basketball anywhere. They especially don't belong in the NCAA Tournament.

Expanding to 128 would kill the NIT.

Does the NIT deserve to be killed? I don't think so. I watch it. I like it. You get to see some teams play that you don't normally see that much. You get to see teams play for a chance to go to New York and play in Madison Square Garden. The teams are pretty good. What's wrong with that?

The NIT is older than the NCAA Tournament. It's a tradition. Why kill it? There are teams in it that will get to play three, four, maybe five more games. Put them in the NCAA and they get one. Is that fair to them?

I know it isn't right that Mississippi and Mississippi State are in the NIT. I know it's not right that Virginia Tech is in the NIT. Here is how to fix that problem.

Expand the Tournament to 72 teams. Instead of one play in game on Tuesday, make it four. And then have four more on Wednesday.

Seed each bracket 1-18. Have the first round be 18 vs 15 and 16 vs 17. The Tuesday winners would then go to the Thursday sites and the Round of 64. Wednesday's winners go on to Friday.

The NIT will live on. They won't have Va Tech, Miss St, or Ole Miss in it. But they could replace them with Miami, Alabama and South Carolina. I'd still watch. Who doesn't want to watch Devan Downey?

CBS could be televising the NCAA opening round games and ESPN does the NIT. Mississippi State gets rewarded for their fantastic SEC Tournament run. Everybody wins!