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

Fan Reaction

The best most efficient way for me to gauge the thoughts of the various fans and writers was to do a simple poll on social media. I had asked the question of “Should the NCAA expand the NCAA tournament to more teams?”  I left the poll up for 24 hours and while I obtained a relatively small sample size of only 89 votes the No votes were 2/3 more than the Yes votes. Every time someone responded with a Yes vote I wanted to know why?  I wanted to see what their reasoning was. There were some individuals who also responded and voted no.

The “Yes” responses were a lot of what we have already discussed. A slight expansion to keep up with the growth of Division 1 basketball. Chris Dobbertean, whose insight, said 80 would be as far as he would like to take the NCAA tournament. He feels anything higher than that would be a logistics nightmare. Joe Budzelek responded with a yes but with an impossibly complicated asterisk. He would like to have a stipulation of at least a .500 conference record to be in consideration for an at-large. That way you can weed out the middling high-major programs that may or may not deserve a bid and give that bid to a deserving mid-major.

The next response of a Yes answer was the best response I got, and it was from Twitter user T^2. He would love to see expansion but provide an AQ for both the regular season league champ and the conference tournament champ if they are different. He also says that by expanding we can do away completely with the one-bid league and that is a great idea that if implemented would grow the game a great deal. Every team getting two auto bids, or at least two bids into the tournament would be 64 bids and if the committee did go to 96 teams that would still leave the same number of at-large teams. This was a fantastic selection and one I want to see implemented. In this model no more would a dominant mid-major team have to worry about losing in their conference tournament. If they won, the regular season then the auto-bid would go to them as well. Those teams currently get an Autobid into the NIT.

To be honest there is no right answer because the current tournament format isn’t broken or wrong. It is just fine, and it is the best event in sports. If the committee does decide to go to 90-plus teams, do not make it a bigger version of the College Football Fiasco and give undeserving teams a chance to win a title.

The best thing about the NCAA Basketball Tournament is that the regular season matters and heading into the season all 363 teams can reasonably win a title. That is why we love it and that is why we will continue to love it. If the tournament were to change for the worse the game may lose some viewers. The upsets in the NCAA tournament, the Florida Atlantic’s, Saint Peter’s, and Oral Roberts of the world are why fans are so rabid about the sport. Change and expansion are good things. Not letting the lower level school be further represented is a bad thing. Please don’t do or advocate for that.