NCAA Basketball: Is NCAA Tournament expansion past 68 teams a good idea?

Research

There is a fantastic article written by John Gasaway called “Expand the Field”. He has given me permission to use some of his great points in this writing. In his article, he also discusses tournament expansion and through his research, he determines that a larger bracket would be a huge benefit to mid-majors. He claims that it is really hard to make a 68-team bracket without mid-majors. However, there have been some AD’s and power conference commissioners who have toyed with the idea of eliminating the mid-majors from the tournament altogether. If this were the case Gasaway suggests that the bracket would need to be smaller instead of much larger.

There is a caveat to the more mid-majors though and that is given the history of seeding in the NCAA tournament those mid-major teams are going to make up the bottom of the bracket. Since the tournament has expanded there have only been a few non-power schools to earn a 1 or 2 seed in the tournament.

Those teams excluding Gonzaga and excluding teams from AAC are Saint Joseph’s a 1 seed in 2003-2004, San Diego State 2010-2011 earned a 2 seed, Cincinnati in 2001-2002 earned a 1 as a member of the Conference USA, and Wichita State in 2013-2014 earned a 1 seed as a member of the Mountain West. Dayton was going to earn a top seed in 2020 before the tournament was canceled. The top 4 seeds are usually riddled with Gonzaga and power conference schools.

As Gasaway says in his article after you get to the 5 and 6 seed lines everything changes. The mid-major at large schools tend to congregate in the lower seed lines. The reason, the metrics as they are currently constructed favor power six teams. The biggest example of this was with Florida Atlantic. Florida Atlantic was not a 9 seed, even though they were given a 9 seed.

The Owls should have been a top 5 seed. However, with their metrics and their inability to schedule good power conference teams, because either those teams would not play them or the deal was not good enough for Florida Atlantic, meant their metrics were not on par. Since there is no eye test they were seeded based on their metrics and quality wins.

Florida Atlantic was an anomaly for a mid-major at large. Those teams make up a large cluster of the 11 and 12 seeds. In fact, according to Gasaway, almost 40% of the NCAA at large bids on the 12 seed line belong to mid-majors. Almost 33% of the 11 seeds belong to mid-major at-larges as well. Those teams are good enough to make the tournament, hence why there are so many upsets on those lines given they are often playing power schools who have some holes in their resumes.

Expanding the field and not wanting the mid-majors to succeed would be an interesting route to take based on the research. Gasaway reports that as of 1985 major conference membership will have increased by a total of 45%. Just this year BYU, Houston, and UCF are all joining the Big 12 and those are just the major ones I can remember off the top of my head. As you go along there is no way to ignore the mid-majors especially if you keep everything the same as it is now about selection. Will it be watered down or boring?  That is up to you.