NCAA Seriously Considering Expanding Men’s College Basketball Tournament

The NCAA is seriously considering expanding the men’s college basketball tournament. Representatives from the NCAA have discussed the idea with conference commissioners, university presidents, and athletic directors.

Currently the men’s NCAA basketball tournament, known colloquially as March Madness, consists of 65 teams. The NCAA operates another tournament, made up of teams that failed to make the field of 65, called the NIT.

Will more teams add more drama and excitment to the NCAA Tournament or will it detract from the March Madness?

Numerically, 18 percent of the teams participate in the NCAA tournament. An additional nine percent partakes in the NIT. Comparatively, 56 percent of college football teams reach some sort of postseason contest.

In professional sports, 53 percent of NHL and NBA teams, 37 percent of NFL teams, and 26 percent of MLB teams receive berths to their respective league’s postseason tournaments.

“If you’re talking about adding more teams, I don’t think the games would change a bit,” said Texas Tech coach Pat Knight. “They’d be just as competitive and I think you’d see more Cinderella stories, more teams people didn’t think had a chance and there’d be a lot more upsets if the NCAA expanded the tournament.”

Right now expanding the men’s basketball tournament(s) is in the zygote stage. No specific plan has been put forward.

The process to alter the tournament is quite arduous as the NCAA must consider the effects of tournament expansion on their student-athletes, how to construct brackets, rules for byes (if there are any), and the all important, how to divvy up the money.

“It’s still a work in progress, so there’s no further developments or status from [the fall],” according to NCAA senior vice president Greg Shaheen. “It’s just a series of ongoing dialogues with interested parties, but nothing definitive to even analyze at this point.”

There are several arguments to increase the number teams in the tournament field.

• Men’s basketball is growing. There are 347 teams in Division I.
• The power conferences are deeper than ever.
• The so-called mid-major schools are ripe with talent.
• An increased field would give smaller schools a greater chance of being included in the postseason.
• A larger-sized tournament would allow for the inclusion of both regular-season and conference tournament champions.

“That would add more relevance to the regular season, instead of just having big games being bracket busters and things like that,” said Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski. “I could see it going to 96, but if they do, I would like to see the regular season champs rewarded. That would give the conferences who don’t get more than one bid a chance to have two bids. If you expand, you would want that to happen.”

However, the most popular argument for increasing the number of teams into the tournament’s cadre is more maudlin than logical.

“The magnitude of the NCAA tournament now is so big that it’s just a great experience for a kid to have that opportunity to play,” said Maryland coach Gary Williams. “Most guys in college don’t go on to play professionally, so if you can say you played in the NCAA tournament, that really kind of changes your career as a college basketball player.”

The arguments against expansion are equally mawkish.

• The tournament’s small field makes it an honor just to participate.
• Expanding the field could lessen the accomplishment of reaching the postseason.
• Increasing the size of the tournament field might diminish the regular season.
• The postseason conference tournaments, like the Big East Tournament, might lose appeal and drama.

“I think it makes it a really special tournament when only 64 get in,” said Washington State coach Ken Bone. “I really like the way it is right now.”

Television will also have to be appeased. One assumes that more tournament games mean more money. Yet, that may not be the case. The NCAA’s television partner, CBS, may view expansion as a dilution of the product.

The Tiffany Network is ensconced in an 11-year, $6 billion contract to broadcast the tournament, but they could opt out of that indenture at the conclusion of this season.

“I’m sure what’s best for TV is what’s probably going to happen and we all have to understand that,” said Villanova coach Jay Wright. “We wouldn’t have the following we do in college basketball if it weren’t for TV. As coaches and players, we’re just playing games, and we’ll be fine with whatever it is.”

Tags: CBS, March Madness, March Madness Tickets, Mike Krzyzewski, NCAA, NCAA Tournament, NCAA Tournament tickets, NIT

This entry was posted on Friday, February 5th, 2010 at 6:39 am and is filed under NCAA. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.