March Madness to expand from 65 teams to 96??

• hoops23

  

  http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/64263
  
  I also saw this on ESPNU during the MSU - Citadel game during halftime..
  
  Absolutely ridiculous and obviously money driven, but could very well happen in 2011.
  
  It'd basically be putting the NIT field and a bunch of other non deserving teams into the dance. Hell, the current 16 seeds are barely deserving.
  
  I like it how it is. No need to mess with it. Sad, that the best tournament to decide a champion is looking to change, while the worst (DI college football) is content...
  
  Thoughts on this? I'm sure 99% of you will hate it as much as me.
• Heretic

  

  I hate it. It's just a way to get more marginal big-conference teams into the "big dance"....turning it into the "blah dance". Just like how 6-6 teams get bowl games. Just like how it went from 64 to 65 teams so two minor-conference teams would have to fight it out for the right to be sacrificed, as opposed to leaving out that 6th or 7th team from the Big East, ACC, Big 10, etc....
• mattinctown

  Horrible FAIL
• sleeper

  

  Bad.
• ironman02

  Awful idea. It's fine the way it is.
• Laley23

  

  Bad
  
  But your wrong, the 16 seeds are deserving as they won their conference tourney. Usually its the 10/11 seeds that arent worthy as they are the bubble teams.
• Fly4Fun

  

  Laley23 wrote: Bad
  
  But your wrong, the 16 seeds are deserving as they won their conference tourney. Usually its the 10/11 seeds that arent worthy as they are the bubble teams.

  If the 16 seeds are more deserving then why are they the 16 seeds? Sorry, but in the tournament the better a team is, the more deserving it is. Just because a team won a terrible conference doesn't mean it is good... that's why they are still 16 seeds.
  
  Expanding the tournament would eliminate some of the excitement of the first round with the big upsets... I think. Ya there would still be upsets, but they would be less likely as theoretically the talent/skill gap will be bigger. Also with all those new teams it just adds more to follow and at some point people will become disinterested.
• WebFire

  Terrible idea. Why fix something that isn't broke?
• thedynasty1998

  

  Horrible idea. Just absolutely horrible.
• Laley23

  

  Fly4Fun wrote:
  
  If the 16 seeds are more deserving then why are they the 16 seeds? Sorry, but in the tournament the better a team is, the more deserving it is. Just because a team won a terrible conference doesn't mean it is good... that's why they are still 16 seeds.
  
  Expanding the tournament would eliminate some of the excitement of the first round with the big upsets... I think. Ya there would still be upsets, but they would be less likely as theoretically the talent/skill gap will be bigger. Also with all those new teams it just adds more to follow and at some point people will become disinterested.

  They arent as good, but that doesnt mean they arent deserving. They did what was asked and made it in without a single question mark as to if they should make it or not.
  
  If you want to change the rules to how a team qualifies than do so, but that would be JUST as bad an idea as expanding the tourney.
• SQ_Crazies

  

  I'm not sure it wouldn't be a good idea. For once, yesterday, I actually agreed with Colin Cowherd. I hate the BCS, but he was right when he said the whole season is a playoff, people follow college football for months. He said for the most part college basketball is a 3 week season--people only care for 3 weeks because not many people care what happens before the tourney. Which is agree with in a lot of ways. Expanding the tournament would just make the "season" longer. Get more people interested too. Why would this be a bad idea? Why the hell not? What is anyone scared of?
• thedynasty1998

  

  You can't compare basketball where they play 30 games to football where they play a dozen.
  
  College football is great because it's every Saturday, and entire communities gather together. College basketball doesn't reach the same masses.
• Mulva

  

  SQ_Crazies wrote: I'm not sure it wouldn't be a good idea. For once, yesterday, I actually agreed with Colin Cowherd. I hate the BCS, but he was right when he said the whole season is a playoff, people follow college football for months.

  Horrible argument. If the whole season is a playoff then how have 3 undefeated teams been eliminated? The way a playoff works is if you keep winning you keep playing.
  
  People follow it for months because it's football. Football is king in the U.S. The whole NFL season isn't a playoff, but people still follow that like crazy too.
  
  I would prefer they didn't expand the NCAA tourney, but I don't think it would be as watered down as the bowl game comparison. There is a huge difference between having 68/120 teams playing in the postseason (football) and having 96/340 or however many D1 basketball teams there are. The ratios aren't even comparable.
• Laley23

  

  SQ_Crazies wrote: I'm not sure it wouldn't be a good idea. For once, yesterday, I actually agreed with Colin Cowherd. I hate the BCS, but he was right when he said the whole season is a playoff, people follow college football for months. He said for the most part college basketball is a 3 week season--people only care for 3 weeks because not many people care what happens before the tourney. Which is agree with in a lot of ways. Expanding the tournament would just make the "season" longer. Get more people interested too. Why would this be a bad idea? Why the hell not? What is anyone scared of?

  i hate that argument. If you put in a 16 team playoff and have the top seeds with home games (for first 2 rounds) how does that detract from how important the season is?? If ANyTHING it makes it better. It makes the rest of the games after your first loss as important as the games before it.
  
  Imagine OSU playing for home field so an SEC team ranked behind them would would have to go to Columbus vs the other way around. College football has it so screwed up its incredible.
  
  Not to mention the bullshit they fed us a few years ago about academics being the reason you couldnt have a playoff. That was debunked when the stretched the bowls out more than a week after New Years day...
• hoops23

  

  Yeah, there really is no argument about the BCS being good. Undefeated teams are left out of the NCG and have no shot at really proving themselves.
• dave

  so basically the big conference tournaments wouldn't mean anything since 90% of the big east, acc, big 10 etc would get in. this is turrible.
• Cha'DIch

  It's a terrible idea, but it all comes down to money.
• reclegend22

  

  This is asinine. It would, simply, be one of the worst decisions in college basketball history.
  
  Forget for a moment that many conference tournaments are money-driven. In fact they all are to a degree -- everything in life is, though, so get over it.
  
  Then think for a moment about the ACC Tournament. The ACC Champion. The Big East Tournament. The six overtime UConn-Syracuse marathon. Think Randolf Childress. The blown kiss to UNC. Think Gerry Mac. The back-to-back buzzer beaters in the Garden. To get his team into the Dance on fumes. Think Big 12. Kansas-Texas. Think Greensboro. Duke-Carolina for it all. Think about how much fun it is to play bracketologist in mid March, how exciting it is to wait for that Sunday when all the matchups are revealed.
  
  Then think about how all of this changes when 100 teams are let in.
  
  Pretty much none of the above matters anymore. Or not as much as it did. You can't fill brackets out when 175 teams are involved. Anyone who thinks this is a great idea is, point blank, an ass.
  
  F the NCAA and the Jimmy Boeheim whiners.
• Jughead

  

  This reminds me of a video from the onion.
  NCAA Expands March Madness To Include 4,096 Teams
• reclegend22

  

  As dave said, this would pretty much spell the end of any meaning to the big conference tournaments. In fact, it would make an argument that they're not needed anymore, as the season would be getting too long. Then all the above memories are wiped away.
  
  Again, this decision is retarded. For lack of a better word, that's what I'm saying. And, honestly, I think that's all that needed to be said.
• King_Crimson

  Bad decision all the way around. I didn't read the link and they may expalin this, but how are they going to do the math from 96 teams? Half of 96 is 48, then 24, then 12, the 6, and then 3. What do they plan to do from this point with 3 teams left?
  
  With 24 teams in each region you are still going to get down to just 3 teams left in every region unless they plan on giving out byes and thats just stupid in my opinion.
  
  The only way I can see them doing it is to expand to 128 teams and one extra week of playing.
• NOL fan

  King_Crimson wrote: Bad decision all the way around. I didn't read the link and they may expalin this, but how are they going to do the math from 96 teams? Half of 96 is 48, then 24, then 12, the 6, and then 3. What do they plan to do from this point with 3 teams left?
  
  With 24 teams in each region you are still going to get down to just 3 teams left in every region unless they plan on giving out byes and thats just stupid in my opinion.
  
  The only way I can see them doing it is to expand to 128 teams and one extra week of playing.

  the top 32 teams would have a bye in round 1