At the end of last week, the NCAA senior vice president of Basketball Dan Gavitt announced that the Tournament expansion talks have resumed. The committee is kicking the tires on a possible expansion, but Gavitt wanted everyone to know that nothing is yet imminent about the expansion. The next time the NCAA tournament committee meets will be in late October and new committee chair Charles McClelland, who is the commissioner of the SWAC, will be tasked with opening this discussion back up
Why has there all a sudden been talk about a possible NCAA tournament expansion? I say don’t fix what is not broken. Well, the NCAA tournament committee may not have much of a choice in the matter. In January, another committee, the Transformation Committee released a report with a slew of recommendations to make college sports better. One of the things was allowing 25% of the teams in sports with at least 200 participants to compete for the National Championship. College Basketball had 363 eligible teams last season. If they are going to utilize the 25% rule for the NCAA tournament that means that 91 teams would need to participate to satisfy that requirement.
There are a lot of college basketball coaches and fans who have many strong opinions on this subject. We all knew expansion was going to eventually happen because there is just too much money to be made. I worry about the low and mid-major teams as it feels like this is a way to make sure they are less represented in a bigger tournament. I do have strong opinions on this topic. My thoughts and the thoughts of other basketball fans and writers are going to be reflected below. I was not able to get in contact with any coaches to interview but they have all strong opinions on this in the past.
I have provided you with an unbiased view of the opinions of many writers and fans as well opinions of coaches. My own thoughts will be included as well. Tournament expansion is going to be a hot topic forever and even though it is inevitable that the NCAA tournament will eventually expand but now doesn’t seem like the best time, especially after what we all just witnessed in March. I tried to make sense of every opinion in the paragraphs below. As you read this continue to keep in mind that the expansion is not imminent, so nothing has happened yet. As of now, the tournament is still 68 teams with 32 Auto Bids to the conference tournament winners.
Good For the Game?
The NCAA always claims they are out to find what is best for the game and what is best for the student-athletes. No, that was not supposed to be satire, that is truly what the NCAA believes. While they do often miss the mark this is one case where they may be on to something, at least on the surface. If the NCAA and the NCAA tournament committee do this correctly this will be great for the game. It will give mid-majors more exposure and could create a system in which more deserving teams make the NCAA tournament.
That would require the NCAA to do this the right way though and not give preferential treatment to the teams from the power conferences. That practice would destroy mid and low-major basketball and would make the NCAA tournament unwatchable for most of the casual fans. Mid Majors are the storylines everyone cares about anyways. Florida Atlantic making the Final Four, Fairleigh Dickinson and UMBC beating a 16 seed, Oral Roberts, Florida Gulf Coast, and Saint Peter’s run to the Sweet 16. The Elite Eight for Saint Peter’s. Those are the storylines that keep everyone coming back. Expansion needs to keep those teams eligible to play and give more mid and low major teams a chance to play in the NCAA tournament to really grow the game.
I know the argument is going to be about money, and that is ultimately the reason that the tournament is going to expand. It will be to make more money for the NCAA. However, this is also going to be good for the game as any team who makes the NCAA tournament and wins a game is given a share of the NCAA tournament schedule. For example, each conference receives a unit for each team making the NCAA tournament. The conference and team each receive an additional unit for each win in the NCAA tournament.
The longer teams go in March the more units they will receive for the conference. Every unit price goes up by 3% from the previous tournament and by giving more teams a chance in the tournament there will be more money to spread around for arena upgrades, recruiting budgets, better concessions.
The most important thing though is that they will have a higher operating budget which means over time those teams could be playing fewer buy games which overall gives a better product. That means instead of Duke playing Bethune-Cookman, Bethune-Cookman may have enough budget to operate for the year and they can play a team of similar talent and be more competitive. Duke can then use that open date for a team of like competition for a tougher game for them.
Obviously, that was all just speculation, and that scenario could happen with more money to go around but that doesn’t mean that it will. The overall point of that was to further drive home that if this is done properly, meaning giving the low and mid-majors the same opportunities as power schools, to fill out the field then it will be good for the game. If the extra spots are given to 17-15 power schools that will honestly drive down the product in the long run and will be hard for the casual fan to watch and care anymore.
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.
How do the Coaches feel?
As you would expect there was a mixed bag of coaches reactions. Some were for it, and some were against it. It is never a bad thing when the coaches, the faces of the game, speak out for or against something as they do have an inside into what is going on within the game. The one thing that does bother me about the coaches who get asked these questions are they are always power conference coaches, and it is always the usual suspects. In this case Tom Izzo, Bill Self and Jim Larranaga.
The power conference coaches are going to have a much different view of the tournament and whether it should expand because their experiences have been different. Every power conference school has a much greater chance of an at-large than any Mid-major not named Gonzaga. The level of competition is usually greater, and those teams are often given the benefit of the doubt about their resume. I know we can all remember a great mid-major team that has been left out the tournament, with a great resume for a mid-major, in favor or a fringy power conference team.
Tom Izzo, the great coach from Michigan State, was quoted in an ESPN article about how the tournament expansion would water down the field, which as mentioned is a very legitimate concern especially if the committee favors power schools over deserving mid-major schools. No one wants to see .500 power conference teams get into the tournament over a 20-win mid-major school that lost in their conference tournament. In that same article, Bill Self mentioned that expansion is the only logical course of action given that the portal is an easy way for teams to get good and stay good. He mentioned that it’s a quick way to add talent and there are going to be a lot of great teams who never seem to take a dip.
Then there were the coaches who were against the expansion. We know Tom Izzo was against the expansion as noted above. Another big name has been outspoken on his desire to not expand and that is Auburn Tigers head coach Bruce Pearl. Pearl was adamant, like Tom Izzo that expansion would water down the tournament and if the expansion was necessary then only add about 4 teams to get to 72 total instead of the 96. The ESPN article only listed the big-name coaches they talked to and since I was not able to secure any coaching interviews for this I don’t have any further insight.
What I do have is comments and responses from writers and fans of this great sport who have provided their feedback into what they would like to see with the tournament. The fans are the ones who are watching the tournament and spending the money to go to the games. They are helping the tournament make the 1.14 billion in revenue that it made in 2022. Our opinions matter and I have gotten some great insight into their minds over the last week.
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.