NCAA Unveils 68-team plan for men's basketball tournament

http://sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=5374116

Finally making the final four at-large teams in work a little harder.

 

All automatic entrants should play in the field of 64. Winning your conference should have more meaning than playing in the 'play-in tourney'.

 

Two issues with it:

1. You need to get the brackets filled out earlier and I've always been a Wednesday-night, Thursday-morning bracket person

2. Is it fair for a team to have to win more games than a lower-seeded team?

 

There's no reason whatsoever it should ever be more than 64 teams. If you have to add another conference to the mix, just subtract one more at-large spot. I'd rather see one more mid-major conference champion make it than see the team that finished seventh in its conference there as a No. 12 or No. 13 seed.

 

Agreed.

Or at least have the conference champion get a higher seed than someone who finished sixth or seventh. There should be some sort of reward for winning a conference championship, mid-major or otherwise.

But we all know that won't happen.

 

That seems to be the idea.

The dumbest part of the whole thing is calling the damn play-in games the first round and the real first round the second round.

As far as the brackets are concerned, it'll just be like the play-in game now, although you might actually have an incentive to pick the upset with the four at-large teams. People will have to decide whether they want to wait for the play-in results to pick the last couple of teams.

 

Tru TV? Gee, thanks. I looooooove Suddenlink for not having many of the channels that other people get everywhere else.

 

TruTV? They gonna bring Nancy Grace back for sideline duty?

I'm confused. So they're going to seed the teams as though there were no play-in game. So if the 12-seed wins do they slot it against the 5-seed, if the 16-seed wins they slot it against the No. 1? That sounds like a recipe for bracket chaos.

 

If I'm reading your interpretation right, I think you may have the wrong idea about the play-in matchups. It's not a case where the four last-at-larges play the four potential 16 seeds. THAT would be a mess. The teams play similar opponents -- the matchups will be, hypothetically, last-at-larges Virginia Tech and Washington meet with the winner claiming a 12 seed, or Prairie View-Florida A&M with the winner claiming a 16.

 

By definition, the winner of the play-in game should be the No. 16 seed.