NCAA Basketball: The potential disaster impact of losing autobids in NCAA Tournament

Watered Down Field

This is the one that many likely are not going to care too much about. I am a big proponent of competition and being a huge Nebraska fan, I always root for the underdog. This is also one of my biggest gripes with the college football playoff is that we all see the same four teams every year and it gets extremely uninteresting. That is the fear I have with the NCAA tournament especially if the inevitable happens and the field shrinks to 8 or 16 teams. It is going to be the same 8 or 16 teams every year.

If you break down the number of times that the majority of the Sweet 16 and the elite eight are the same every year, I would guess you would find a pretty good mix of old and new teams. Gonzaga is still the only team to make the second weekend every year over the last four years. It keeps coming back to this, but parity is what this sport so special, and even with two new teams in the Sweet 16 every year that would be worth it for me. This year is a tournament I will never forget because of the Saint Peter’s run and it’s one that most of the die-hard fans will remember forever either.

Do we all want to get to a place where 1-seed Duke plays 8-seed Providence every year?  I know I don’t, I like variety and I like seeing all of the mid-major schools making a run, it makes the sport fun to watch and extremely fun to cover. It is unpredictable and that is the way sports should be. It also makes Championship Week the most fun week of the year. If they eliminated auto bids, Championship Week would be obsolete, and the tournament would start to be extremely predictable.

The die-hards will still watch the tournament, but it would not attract near the viewers it does now and there would be no need for brackets as most of the teams would all be blue bloods and again, predictable. Please don’t ruin this event with your greed. It is perfect just the way it is.