What’s not to like about March? You get to drink on St. Patrick’s Day before enjoying the greatest basketball tournament on Earth while recovering from your hangover.
There’s nothing like watching 16 college basketball games a day on the opening weekend of March Madness. It’s amazing.
Actually, it’s so amazing that we should add more teams to the field of 65. Maybe 96 teams? Wouldn’t you like to add a 17-16 North Carolina to the field? Why not the powerhouses from William & Mary, Coastal Carolina and Jackson State?
If I’m sounding a little crazy, forgive me. I’m merely channeling the insanity of the NCAA because they are actually planning on expanding the tournament — likely after their current television contract with CBS expires in 2013.
As the old saying goes, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.” So why would the NCAA try manipulate its marquee event?
It comes down to two reasons: The first is the NCAA thinks by adding 32 extra teams they can create more upsets and Cinderella stories on the first weekend of play. 
On the surface it makes sense that by adding more teams, you will get more upsets and more unexpected runs to the Sweet Sixteen.
But consider how they intend to add these 32 extra teams. Seeds one through eight in each region will get a first–round bye. That leaves seeds nine through 24 to play off against each other on the Tuesday and Wednesday of the “opening weekend”. The rest of the tournament resumes, as it exists now.
In other words, the NCAA would force all the lower seeds to play three times in six days, with little time to prepare for the top quality teams.
Look at this year’s tournament darlings: Northern Iowa University, Cornell University and St. Mary’s University. Those teams pulled off massive upsets by beating Kansas, Wisconsin and Villanova respectively in the second round.
But if those three underdogs had to play an extra game at the beginning of the week they would have to mentally and physically prepare for two other teams before taking on those top-ranked teams. Do you really think they would have been capable of pulling off those same upsets in the proposed 96-team format?
Also, I don’t think it’s too much of a stretch to say the majority of these 32 extra teams would be teams that currently play in the National Invitation Tournament. Considering half of the NIT field are terrible teams from the major conferences, it defeats the purpose of adding more upsets. Fans want mid-major teams they’ve never seen before pull off upsets over more dominant schools. That’s the magic of watching Northern Iowa knock off Kansas.
The second –and likely, real– reason the NCAA wants to do this is because with a proper revenue sharing system in place they think they’ll make a lot more money.
Unfortunately, there are major problems with that theory. First of all, the change would effectively devalue the regular season, especially for the teams from major conferences. If the televised games of these major conference teams will be worth very little in terms of the basketball season, how exactly will ratings be driven up?
Also, keep in mind the majority of viewers have to skip some work or school just to watch those crucial Friday and Saturday games.
Nobody, other than the fans of the schools involved, watches the play-in game between the 64th and 65th teams in the tournament. With that in mind, it seems unlikely many viewers will tune in for what amounts to 32 play-in games.
It’s amazing that the NCAA could actually consider such a terrible decision, let alone go ahead with it. But I suppose this is the same organization that defends the Bowl Championship Series to determine a college football champion, so they’re probably beyond help.
So enjoy filling out your brackets and watching the tournament this year, and maybe even the next. Treasure it as much as you can, because thanks to a few greedy, misguided businessmen, it’ll soon be gone.