NCAA Basketball: Why they shouldn’t expand the NCAA tournament

One of the main discussion points around NCAA Basketball teams’ media days is the NCAA tournament possibly being massively expanded. This can’t happen.

Over the last couple of weeks, there have been conversations about expanding March Madness to include more teams. While the number of teams added has changed depending on who is creating the proposal, it seems like there would be added 20 teams at least. Recently it was reported that the NCAA transformation committee has had a “dialogue” about expanding march madness.

That is not a good idea. While it makes sense from a business perspective as more march madness games mean more revenue, it does devalue the product. This potential expansion would devalue the conference tournament.

While a conference title does mean something to fans, players, and alumni, the smarter play would be to rest your top players during conference title week for march madness if the tournament got expanded. For most teams, March Madness is a sprint, not a marathon. A potential expansion would change that.

While the talent gap doesn’t exactly stop at 68 teams when the 5-seed is heavily favored to win or doesn’t have to play for three rounds, it starts to turn into a marathon. One of the things that I love about college basketball is that (unless you are a team like the 2014-15 Kentucky Wildcats) every game has a huge effect on reaching your goals that season.

At the same time, it isn’t like college football where you have virtually no shot at the college football playoff if you lose two games. Expanding the tournament would make each game in the regular season have way less impact. I think the term load management would appear in college basketball if they expanded the tournament.

This would also take away the fun of the last days of the regular season. Ron Harper Jr took Rutgers on a fun journey during the last days of the season. It looked like Rutgers would be out of the tournament, but Harper went off against Indiana and Penn State in the final regular season games. Rutgers would end up losing in the first four.

While it won’t be remembered by college basketball fans around the country, it was a very cool moment for Rutgers fans and Harper himself.  In a world where the tournament is massively expanded, Rutgers probably makes the tournament after beating Michigan State on Feb 5th.

Teams do get snubbed every year but that doesn’t mean the NCAA should massively expand the tournament. While it probably equals more money, it ruins the product to a point where it gets oversaturated. Eventually, if there is too much of something, it gets devalued. Therefore the Madness shouldn’t be expanded.