GARDENPlants and seeds

NCAA Tournament: Does it Need Expansion?

65 individual teams. Each year, Selection Sunday passes, and then the howling about the NCAA Tournament begins. Who’s that making all the fuss, you may ask? Well, frankly, it’s everyone who didn’t make the tournament cut. They cite their conference affiliation and ask, ‘why not us?’

As predictable as the yearly complaints and protestations are the NCAA’s desire to wring out just a few more bucks from their lucrative tournament. Combine these two realities, and you birth a scenario where a bigger field of teams in the tournament could be mutually beneficial for the NCAA and all those howling coaches who got locked out of the tournament.

To that end, it seems the NCAA is indeed in talks to expand their tournament with the major TV networks. It’s almost idiot-proof; more dollars in licensing fees and more ad money, to boot. Everybody wins!

One option to consider is the ‘play-in game.’ Play-in games are nothing new in the NCAA. In 1991, three play-in games determined which of a few teams could advance into the then-field of 64. In 2001, an automatic bid was added for the struggling Mountain West conference. The two lowest-seeded teams competed before the tournament actually begun, with the winner advancing into the tournament as a 16 seed.

The general idea is that the NCAA adds a play-in game for each region. The resulting setup is three additional at-large bids added.

There are problems with this scenario, mainly that taking winners from the eight weakest conferences and having them play a mini-tournament of sorts would not do much to alleviate the current divide between basketball’s haves and have-nots. The most likely result from such a scenario is that the weakest teams in the largest conferences get bragging rights for making it into the tournament.

The NCAA has other options to add teams to the tournament field, all of them with various pros and cons. The question is: is any of this necessary? One could argue either perspective, based on his or her own personal feelings. The looming fact that remains for the decision makers is this: there is a lot of money to be made.

One fact that hasn’t been mentioned so far is that the NCAA can leave their CBS deal once the 2010 Final Four is over. With the broadcast rights to the Final Four up for bid, it’s natural for the NCAA to look for ways to maximize both exposure and hence, profits. There is no question these concerns weigh heavily on the minds of the NCAA decision makers, as well as the various networks seeking to woo them into a deal.

BYU escapes Air Force: Clinches 3rd Straight MWC Title: March Madness 2009