So you really think the NCAA is kinder to mid-majors these days?

Not a chance. Right now, the tournament takes one out of every five teams in D1. If you're not in the top 20 percent at the end of the regular season, you don't deserve to play in the tournament.

Besides, every school save independents and eight others have a chance to play in a single elimination format for the NCAA tournament right now. You'll always have schools complaining they got screwed, no matter how many you take.

 

No freaking way on 128. You'd have powerhouses like Wichita State (16-14), Drake (16-15) and Wyoming (16-15) making the field. Ugh.

 

THE TOURNAMENT IS FINE THE WAY IT IS!!

 

Watched an ESPN Classic of a game from the 1984 tournament today. The late Jim Thacker was one heck of an announcer.

The graphics were awful. No score or time bug in the corner. Players wearing Daisy Dukes, no shot clock or 3-point line and they called fouls on almost any contact. A different game, for sure.

The tournament is fine, except the final two at-large teams should be in the play-in game.

 

Thacker was a great announcer.

Also notice that players acknowledged foul calls by raising their hands. Now, nobody committs a foul it seems.

But one question I have is where would the at-large winner play in the tournament. Should the No. 1 seed have to draw the Stanford/Arkansas winner or the FAMU/Niagra winner.

 

Players today don't raise a hand. Rather, they raise their arms in stunned disbelief that they were caught called.

 

You'd seed the 64, then add the highest remaining at-large team and match it against the lowest-seeded at-large team. So they'd probably bith be 12s or 13s. They play in, and then play the normal first-round game against a 5 or 4 seed.

I've said it here before: When Jim Thacker and Billy Packer worked ACC games for Jefferson Pilot in the 1970s, there was no better basketball broadcasting team in the country. Thacker was quality, Packer wasn't the insufferable prick he seems to be today, and they didn't fawn over anyone like ESPN's guys do today.

Be it from U Hall, Cole FH, Littlejohn or Reynolds, they called the game fair and square.

 

Louisville was *that* close to disbanding the football program because it was losing so much money right before Schnelly.

FH...here's a question for you:

I've always heard that Schnelly, a UK alum, was interested in the UK job in '89 when it opened up and UK never offered, jumping on Bill Curry (makes my skin craw just typing his name) instead. Have you ever heard that, and is there any truth to it?

 

Yup. Thacker was really good, and Packer had much of the insight he still possesses and none of the smugness or pseudo-omnipotence.

 

I'd still rather listen to Packer than anyone who works for ESPN not named Jay Bilas.

 

I say ditch the play-in game and go to back to 64 teams and be done with it.
All a play-in game does is create the possibility of adding more.
But if I was King, I'd cut the field to a max of 64 but likely less with a provision that a team has to finish in the top half of its conference or win its tourney for the auto bid. So a conference could only get in half of its teams or half plus one, if a cellar dweller won the tourney.
If you are from a smaller conference, and if its team has lost by 20 or more points in three consecutive tournament, the conference loses its automatic bid and goes to at-large status.
I'd also slot the mid-majors at 9-12, so they actually have a shot at winning and put the worst teams from the majors at 13-16.