Quick Fix: Expansion and the NCAA Tournament

There has been a growing sentiment in sports circles concerning expansion of the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament. The opposing sides can be summarized as those who do not want to meddle with a "perfect" event and those who think more is better. A common push is a move to 96 teams (an increase from the current 65 team set-up). You could spend all day listening to arguments from both sides and not come to a conclusion. There are merits to both retaining the current form and to expanding.

By staying at 65:

• the regular season has more meaning
• conference tournaments have impact
• more drama surrounding the "bubble"
• brackets are easy to fill out

By expanding to 96:

• more teams with opportunity to compete
• less debate surrounding the "bubble"
• more chance of early round upsets
• more spots for mid-majors

In terms of my personal opinion, I believe that expansion could be good, but an expansion to 96 is the worst case scenario. Here is why:

1. 96 teams will still leave room for argument over who's in, who's out. The bubble issue remains.
2. The regular season and conference tournaments would become even less meaningful than they are now. The drama would be removed almost entirely.
3. Mid-majors would most likely not be helped. The extra spots would ensure more teams from the power conferences get in.

With this said, I am pro-expansion. I am pro-super expansion. Others have brought similar ideas to the table, but I believe I have a complete answer. The NCAA should expand the tournament to include all teams...sort of.

As I have done before (like here), I turn to English soccer for a template on how to successfully structure a sport. The template for the new NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament should be mirrored after the Football Association Challenge Cup, commonly known as the FA Cup. First, a quick idea of what this concept entails. 

The FA Cup is a far reaching knock-out style tournament featuring (almost) every team in professional English soccer. This number of team's in the current version of the FA Cup is 762. 762? You read correctly. Depending on the prestige of the division, each team enters at a different stage of the competition. For example, the weakest teams (those playing in the lowest levels of the system) will enter in the first rounds. On the other hand, teams from the Premier League (the highest level in the system) will not enter until three or four rounds into the competition. In the end, there are 14 rounds of play, which breaks down into six qualifying rounds, followed by six further "proper" rounds, semi-finals, and the finals. The distinction between the qualifying rounds and the "proper" rounds indicate when the top clubs enter the competition. Other rules are simple; each match-up is a single knock-out stage with the winners advancing to the next round. This proceeds until a championship match is held with the winner being named the winner. (Side-note: There are more complexities in terms of setting the match-ups, scheduling and venues, but for the sake of this article, this is all the knowledge necessary).

There are 347 Division 1 men's basketball teams in this country. This is less than half of the teams which enter the FA Cup. Why not allow them all at a (slim) chance at glory? 

The first step would be to figure out when certain conferences enter the competition. The BCS Conferences would be like the Premier League and the conferences which annually send only one team to the tournament would act as the lower level soccer divisions. Teams from the Summit League, the Big West Conference and the Patriot League (for example) would be the ones playing in the initial rounds. Then teams from the Ohio Valley Conference and the Horizon League would enter. As rounds progressed, "bigger" conference teams from the Mountain West Conference and Atlantic Ten Conference would join. This would conclude with the Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten Conference and the rest of the BCS schools entering at the final stage. 

There would clearly be room to reconfigure some of the entrance points. For example, a team which has been ranked in the Top 25 most of the season but plays in a lower conference (let's say Northern Iowa, the best team in the Missouri Valley Conference), should not enter the competition before the worst team in a power conference (let's say Indiana). This would mean that there would still be a need for the Selection Committee. Let the Selection Committee retain the power to seed 65-96 teams. These teams would be the final entrants into the tournaments. This would allow for a reward to teams from lower conferences who exceed expectations. It would not be fair to have strict tranches without allowing for flexibility to movement. 

One final element which needs to be addressed is how the regular season and conference tournaments are affected. With this new system, conference tournaments would be scrapped (One suggestion: Hold these tournaments at the beginning of the season instead). The regular season would become more important with the reward of receiving "byes" on the line. In terms of when the competition would begin, assuming two rounds played a week (which is how the current system is structured), it would only take one additional weekend to complete. And if the conference tournaments are removed, suddenly a free week of basketball is possible.

Does this really ruin the process of filling out a bracket? Not at all. I would assume that most people would still wait until the final 64 teams are set until they put their picks down (sure the super-fans would fill out a full bracket with all 347 teams, but the office pools would still be set up entirely the same). The way it works with the current system, everyone fills out their bracket on Selection Sunday or the next few days. This could still be the case. Instead of waiting for the Selection Show to finish, everyone would be watching another round of games which would determine the final 64 team bracket. Which sounds more fun, watching teams fighting for their spots or watching Greg Gumbel list each match-up? I know where I stand. When the tournament expanded to include the one play-in game (and thus a 65th team), no one rushed into making that pick. Instead, the normal bracket was maintained. This would be what would happen with super-expansion.

Imagine a team from the Mid-American Conference riding some upsets into the third weekend. Imagine every fan base given at least one postseason game. Imagine the power teams sitting back and waiting to feast on their weary first round opponents. Imagine the fervor behind the 64 team bracket where the spots are not just handed out, but earned instead. I see no downside.

GRM

Quick Fix: Expansion and the NCAA Tournament