NCAA tourney expansion?

Of course, don't know why I put the question mark up there. It will happen in some form.

http://cbs.sportsline.com/collegebasketball/story/9525770

For me, this falls under the term "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." I thought 64 was the perfect number and griped a little when they put that play-in game in. I know there were always bubble teams complaining when they didn't get in, but you know, that's life, just get better and get in next year.

Of course, if the tourney was expanded to include 128, like the coaches want, any team that didn't get in had better STFU. How pathetic would it be for a coach on the outside to whine that his squad actually deserved the 125th seed?

 

How sad is it that college basketball is looking to expand its 64-team tournament and yet college football has no playoff whatsoever? What a disgrace.

 

Teams that don't get in already need to STFU. Nobody, who deserves in any way, to get into the tournament, does not get into the tournament.

Forget expanding to 128 or beyond -- cut back to the geometrically-perfect 64, and get rid of the retarded play-in games.

 

Ickey is correct.

 

Do they really think people are this dumb? Gee, coach managed to break .500 in a BCS conference and grab a No. 25 seed. Let's give him an extension!

Give me a break. If everyone is special, no one is.

 

CBS would never agree to this.
CBS writes the checks.
The coaches can talk all they want.

 

If they want to add games in Dayton, four instead of one, I could live with that.

But make those add-in games the "bubble" teams who get in, not the small conference teams

 

I say make it 72, top 8 seeds get a bye, lowest 8 seeds play each other at a home site during the week, like the play-in game now, so one of them can say they won an NCAA tournament game.

I'm all for giving every league an automatic bid, but the conference tournament winner getting the bid is wrong. A regular season champ that has a bad game gets penalized despite 4 months of great play. Conversely, a team with a mediocre record gets on a run, wins the tournament and bounces a more deserving team.

The argument has always been if the conference tournament winner doesn't get the bid, no one will show up for the tourney. For the lower conferences, no one shows up anyway. The big conferences will sell out their tournaments regardless of the set up. As is, it's not the top 64 or 65 teams in the country anyway.

 

There's more money to be made. Money money money money money.

 

Ludicrous idea. Now that the Big 12 and Pac 10 have conference tourneys, every school has a shot at a bid by winning it's tournament, so in actuality the NCAAs start at the beginning of the conference tourney. STFU, college coaches, and win your freakin' tournament.

 

They need to drop that stupid play-in game is what they need to do, not expand it to the point that every mediocre team from a major conference gets into the tournament...although I'm sure Billy Packer would love that idea.

 

Actually, not. The play-in games are played in front of 10,000 empty seats, to TV ratings of about 0.000001. Considering the NCAA usually has to fly four teams across the country to play the play-in games, I have no doubt the play-in games, in and of themselves, are huge money-losers.

And, a lot of the first-round games are pretty much the same. Sure, the top-seeded teams have big followings, and teams playing reasonably close to home draw some fans, but teams seeded 5-16 playing in geographically remote regions don't draw crap.

I've been to first-and-second-round NCAA games with 3,000 people in the stands.

Adding another round or two to the tournament, would just mean more and more of these games: mediocre teams playing in front of 3/4-empty buildings. You think that's what CBS wants?

Unless they decided to junk the entire seeding concept, and go with strictly geographical bracketing, which means you'd have Duke vs. UNC as the tourney's opening game, 8 years out of 10.