In 1985, the NCAA decided to expand their National Championship Tournament field to 64 teams. The tournament was seemingly perfect - in the early rounds powerhouse teams are pitted against unheard-of schools from wacky conferences, creating a David vs. Goliath feel that every sports fan loves. As the tournament progresses, the matchups keep getting better and better until the Final Four, where the championship is decided. The great thing about the tournament is that no one can ever question the legitimacy of the champion, as all of the deserving teams were given the opportunity to make their claim.
Or were they?
Back when the NCAA expanded the field to 64 in 1985, there were 306 teams in Division I basketball. Since that time, 37 more teams have earned Division I status. Naturally, the NCAA should continue to add spots to the tournament so the same percentage of teams are still making the field. But, as the NCAA is in fact the NCAA, instead of adding 8 more spots to the field, they have only added 1. To make matters worse, the viewer is now stuck with this meaningless, pitiful game between some team from the MWEASC and African-American School State.
I ask the NCAA this: If you are going to go ahead and have this play-in game, why not turn it into something that is even remotely worth watching? It's really quite simple.
Step 1 - All automatic qualifiers are guaranteed to not be playing on Play-in Tuesday
Step 2 - 3 more spots are added, for a total of 68 teams in the Big Dance.
Step 3 - The committee seeds the field 1-64 like they normally do. They then take the last 4 at-large teams they put in, match them up with the last 4 teams they left out, and schedule them all to play on Tuesday in Dayton. (The teams may be playing for various seed numbers and in various regions. There could be multiple games in the same region. These games would most likely be for 11, 12, or 13 seeds)
Step 4 - The normal "avoid conference matchups, avoid previous matchups" rule can be bent for these games, as this would obviously make it a real strain on the committee.
The result would be a spectacular round known as the "Bubble-Busters".
No team can clamor that they got jobbed on Selection Sunday. After all, if you couldn't make the field of 68, what argument do you have that you should have made the field of 64? Instead of hypothetical "who would win" debates, the bubble teams are actually put on the court to face each other.
And what better way to get people geared up for the tournament?
It's a strange phenomenon that in the weeks leading up the tournament, the mediocre bubble teams are talked about more than even the #1 ranked team in the country. Therefore, this format would put 8 of the most talked-about teams in the country on the court on the same day. College Basketball fans would be elated to see UNLV take on St. Mary's, San Diego State battle Virginia Tech, or Kansas State and Cincinnati pitted together.
The argument against expanding the field is that you would lose a lot of the excitement the tournament offers by watering down the field and dragging out the length of the tourney. And for most expansion proposals, this argument is not a bad one.
But this expansion not only keeps the tournament the same length, it also takes away 1 meaningless game and replaces it with 4 exciting ones that fans would actually watch and enjoy.
The fans are happy that they now have a kick-off that matches the excitement of the rest of the tournament. The small conferences are happy that no longer will their teams be screwed into playing an extra game. The big conferences are happy that they now have 3 more opportunities to get their middle-of-the-pack teams some national recognition.
Everyone's happy. And that's exactly why the NCAA would never consider this.
