The NCAA Tournament field continues to grow, but that might not be the best thing for college basketball.
As it stands right now, 68 teams are invited to play in the annual NCAA college basketball tournament, or, as it’s known by it’s more proper name – March Madness.
32 conference winners get automatic berths in the tournament, and then 36 teams get “at-large” bids. Now there are discussions underway to possibly expand the tournament field even further.
Mistake. Huge mistake.
Oh, it’s obvious why the NCAA would love to see more teams playing in the premier postseason tournament. More teams = more television time = higher advertising revenues. It’s not a complicated equation.
If anything, a move in the opposite direction is needed. The NCAA Tournament should be for the elite teams in the nation, and the more you expand the field of teams, the more teams who do not get invited will have reason to complain, and then you have to expand again, and so on, and so on…it becomes an ugly cycle of watering down what is probably the best “playoff” there is in sports today.
In any league, not just college basketball, there is a hierarchy to the quality of play. A small percentage of the teams could be considered truly elite, perennial contenders and fixtures within the league. Then you have a larger portion of good teams – programs with winning records, who generally speaking, can run with just about anyone. There will be an equal portion of mediocre teams, and then a portion (similar in size to the elite) consisting of losing or poorly performing teams.
When the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985, the fringe of some of those mediocre teams started to be reached, and once you tap into that group of teams, the inevitable “what about us?” argument crops up from teams with similar records or common opponents.
It was that mentality that led the NCAA to expand to 68 teams. But in truth, it’s really 72 teams, as there are four “play-in” games that determine teams 65-68.
The more the tournament committee decides that they can’t choose between so many equally (un)qualified teams, the worse the situation becomes.
Getting to the NCAA Tournament should have meaning, it should be the pinnacle of a season’s worth of hard work, and only those who truly showed the ability to be champions should get an invitation to the Big Dance.
The 32 conference champions are worthy, right? Or are they?
By the current rules, a team who loses every single game of the regular season could come into their conference tournament, have a miracle run of 4-5 games to win it, and therefore get an automatic bid to the NCAA Tournament.
Wait…what?
No, it’s unlikely that scenario could ever happen, but some situations that smack of that kind of luck have happened. Take the 2007-2008 Georgia Bulldogs for example.
Georgia came into the SEC Tournament that season with a 13–16 overall record, having gone only 4-12 in conference play during the regular season. Miraculously, Georgia was able to win the 2008 SEC Tournament, thereby giving them automatic entrance to the NCAA Tournament.
So, the Bulldogs were rewarded for playing poorly during the regular season, and having a 4-game streak of luck in the tournament.
For a more recent example, the 2013-14 Cal Poly Mustangs leap to mind. A team that finished 10-19 in the regular season (6-10 in conference play), was able to punch their ticket to the Big Dance by winning the Big West Tournament. Is this really the kind of team we want to see playing in the postseason?
The conference tournaments have become magical golden tickets for teams who have had less than watchable seasons for months, and believe me when I tell you nobody wants to watch them during March Madness either.
If any automatic bid is to be given to conference champions, it should be to ones crowned during the regular season. The teams who poured their all into 30 or more games and fought their way through both conference and non-conference schedules to come out on top. Those are the true champions, not teams who managed to survive a 4-game draw in a meaningless tournament.
The best size for the field (and what turned out to be some of the best tournaments ever, by the way) was when there were 48 teams, from 1980-82. A lot of conference champions, and a sprinkling of teams who played well enough to challenge for those crowns. Playing in the tournament had meaning during those years (and prior, when the field was smaller still), and teams who were invited felt they had truly accomplished something.
Perhaps its our nation’s growing “there are no losers” mentality that feeds this exhaustive need to constantly include more and more unworthy teams to the postseason. This forgiving and uncompetitive mindset goes against everything that sports is about, and makes a mockery of teams who have fought valiantly to become winners.
I say reduce the field, make the tournament more meaningful again, and by proxy, make the postseason National Invitational Tournament (the consolation tourney) more competitive and desirable to view.
Unfortunately, the desire for more money, and the attempt to hurt less feelings and to give fewer kids unwarranted feelings of inadequacy will probably prevail, and we’ll eventually see more and more middling teams added to what will become more of a joke than the college football bowl season.
I shudder to think of the day when I’ll hear, “Who’s in the round of 128 this year?”
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