Should the tournament expand?

[katwest]

They should leave it alone, back when there were less teams in it, it was more competitive. When you keep expanding, you are rewarding mediocrity, it's hard enough to win 6 games to win it all. It's kind of like bowl games in football, a team with six losses has no business going to a bowl, but like some said earlier, it's all about money now.

 

[BoogieTowns]

It's the best tournament or post-season of any sport. Do not touch it!

 

[M4CAT]

Time to break out this video.

 

[JonathanW]

No. Go back to 64. Just makes way more sense that way. The last 4-8 in have no chance at winning it.

But if they do expand it, I would prefer a setup where both the regular season and conf tournament champs get auto invites. Give the regular season champ a first round bye, or maybe you get a first round bye if you win both. You would have a different number of at-large bids each year, depending on how many teams won both. So it would make the tournament committee's job tougher, but with computers maybe not.

 

[UK90]

32 teams and final four on is best out of 3. It should be hard to get in the tournament. You should have to earn it all year long instead sucking all year and then winning the conference tournament with a losing record

What bugs me even more than that scenario is when they give at large bids to teams with like 13 losses, just barely above .500, and with losing conf records.

There barely seems a point to the regular season if that’s all you have to do to earn your way into the tourney to determine the national champion. When those type teams pull upsets, it doesn’t feel like a Cinderella story as much as a team being unjustly rewarded for prior underachievement.

 

[celtikat33]

No, elite 8 on, best out of 3.

This is the answer right here. It takes some of the luck out of the equation.

 

[FltDoc]

No

Its all about the $$ for expansion..

See what it’s done to football bowl season

 

[bthaunert]

No it is good the way it is. The only change should be one jon Rothstein has been preaching for a while. The play in games in Dayton should be the last 8 at large teams instead of the teams that won their conference. So the 11 and 12 seeds should be playing in Dayton instead of the 16 seeds

Agree with this 100% and always have. Sucks that a school makes the tournament for the first time in a long time and they get sent to Dayton on a Tuesday night. Let them experience that Thursday/Friday vibe.

 

[UKUGA]

No.

It’s been tough for me to raise a family and watch all 67 games the last several years.

If it expands to 96 teams, I may only be able to watch 85-90 games.

 

[hunterdoug]

No
64 is perfect

 

[HenryMuto]

Hell to the NO

 

[onearmedjesus]

I am going to say yes...

Just a bit. Let the play-in games be for all the 15 and 16 seeds (go to 72 teams). Four games on Tuesday and four on Wednesday. If I was a fan of these teams, I would love the idea.

Don't hate me for this.

 

[WeWant9]

No. There’s not really a reason expand it, but it’ll probably happen at some point as money usually wins out.

 

[jrm693]

I personally like the current setup, what I would change is I would have a game every night, with the exception of Sunday so we could enjoy the tourney more, they flood the first week with too many games you cant watch them all.

 

[CB3UK]

Hell no

 

[UKWildcats1987]

What bugs me even more than that scenario is when they give at large bids to teams with like 13 losses, just barely above .500, and with losing conf records.

There barely seems a point to the regular season if that’s all you have to do to earn your way into the tourney to determine the national champion. When those type teams pull upsets, it doesn’t feel like a Cinderella story as much as a team being unjustly rewarded for prior underachievement.

All those teams would win the cupcake conferences. So you want to reward more low level conference teams with overinflated records due to dog crap competition? Agree to disagree.

It's like arguing against less sec and big ten teams n the football playoff because they beat up on each other.

 

[kennyskywalker34]

The only thing I hate about March is the small one bid leagues the regular season is completely meaningless.
You have teams that have dominated all season long in conference play to drop a game in the conference tournament to the 6th place team that's 14 and 17. They go to the tournament and the team that lost once and had a 4 game lead over the 2nd place team gets left out.

 

[NC Weasel]

We're all debating the wrong issue. Expansion wouldn't be about basketball, fairness, getting more teams to have a chance, etc. Expansion would be about MONEY.

The NCAA keeps most of the BB Tourney revenue, and its big bucks. But March Madness is not so big that the NIT and CBI don't still exist. And now the new Fox Tourney in Vegas with 16 teams from the "Big" (12, East, Ten) Conferences. Point being, the NCAA thinks they are leaving money on the table so how do they rake all that in? What do they hurt to do it?

Its also partially why football expansion took so long. What we see happening to the non-championship bowl games (players opting out, playing 1/2 game, not going full speed) was always a concern. The bowl games would become irrelevant. NIL just matured that problem overnite.

So expand the Big Dance gets more guys to stay for that 1 more game. But it almost has to kill at least 1, if not 2, of these post season tourneys. Frankly, maybe thats ok. Million other places these guys can go play ball before summer starts.

 

[crestcat]

Too many teams in the tournament now. I see that maybe seven SEC teams might make the dance, if you come in seventh in the SEC you shouldn’t be playing for the national championship. It was originally a tournament the best teams were invited to, you really had to earn your invite.

Its a very entertaining tournament but ……..

 

[nssdigitalchumps]

Yes or no, and why?

I don’t need two NBA playoffs. lol

 

[podgejeff_]

Get rid of the First Four nonsense and go back to 64.

I think I'd go one step further and make the top 4 conference champions the top seeds. Make winning the conference REALLY matter. Play in a weak conference year in and out like Gonzaga? Sorry, no #1 seed for you. But that might be a bit too much.

Conference realignment will eventually change the whole thing anyways to an SEC vs Big 10 challenge.

 

[Rockford]

No.

Don’t think adding teams would make it better.

 

[HenryMuto]

The only expansion I would even want to see would be 68 to 72 and make Wednesday have all the games the 1st round (8 games) and have them on all day all night and it would allow me to take another day off work to watch the tournament.

Also if you expanded to 72 I think 2 of the final 4 spots should be mandatory to go to the 2 top Mid Major teams that won their regular season but did not get selected as at large for the top 70 teams.

This is the only way I agree to expand.

We would go from 72 to 64 on Wed then the rest Thursday on be normal

 

[gharding07]

Expanding the tournament would make the regular season meaningless in a lot of ways. 64 teams was and always will be absolutely perfect. The best team already doesn't usually win, why water it down even more??

 

[kennyskywalker34]

I think the regular season champ in small one bid leagues should automatically go to the NCAAT.
Let everyone else in the conference play in the conference tournament and the winner goes to the NIT.
Of course that won't happen wouldn't make for good tv when they air the conference tournament championship games.