Ugh. I really hope this isn’t accurate. | RT @SPORTSbyBROOKS: ESPN source says 96-team March Madness is “done deal.” http://bit.ly/aBgkP3
Ugh. I really hope this isn’t accurate. | RT @SPORTSbyBROOKS: ESPN source says 96-team March Madness is “done deal.” http://bit.ly/aBgkP3
See, this is what happens when you have a tournament, slippery slope man, slippery slope 😉
Obama can’t pass health care so he talks about the BCS. NCAA cant fix BCS so they talk about basketball. So the Deciders are hoping the “trickle down” works better with buck-passing that it does with the economy.
DAVID, HOW DARE YOU SUGGEST THAT ANYONE WOULD INCREASE THE TOURNAMENT TO 96 TEAMS, THAT’S COMPLETELY NUTS…
What? Oh. Never mind. 🙂
Last year 18 out of the 32 teams from the post-season NIT were from non-AQ (football) conferences. Assuming the expanded NCAA is essentially current NCAA + current NIT, the expanded NCAA would be good for mid-majors, right?
Maybe not. There’s some interest in a Missouri Valley team like Northern Iowa making some noise in the NCAAs; Illinois State, not so much.
Yeah but, without looking it up, I’d imagine 6-8 of those NIT teams from non-AQ conferences were “auto bid” teams, meaning NIT teams that win the regular season title of a horrible conference (like the SWAC or the Atlantic Sun or whatever) but lose in the conference tourney. They get an automatic bid to the NIT, but are inevitably seeded #7 or #8, and are by no means among the “next 32” best teams in the country. Those teams would NOT be getting NCAA bids under this new system.
Also, a few of the 18 were probably teams from the Mountain West or Atlantic 10, which are non-AQ conferences to be sure, but arguably aren’t really bona fide “mid-majors” in the basketball context. Does anyone really think of Xavier or UNLV (again, talking basketball here, not football) as a cuddly underdog?
*or Conference USA — the other “not really mid-major” league in basketball.
P.S. From the RPI-based projected 96-team field linked above, here’s the conference breakdown:
Big East (13), ACC (11), Big 12 (8), Big Ten (7), SEC (7), Atlantic 10 (6), CAA (5), Conference USA (4), Mountain West (4), Pac-10 (4), Missouri Valley (3), Ivy (2), Metro Atlantic (2), WAC (2), West Coast (2).
Not exactly a ton of mid-major love there, outside of the CAA. (Granted, it’s not an especially good year for leagues like the Valley.) That’s 50 teams from the BCS leagues — 68 percent of their total membership!! — plus another 14 teams from the kinda-sorta-not-really mid-major leagues (A-10, C-USA, MWC). Only six mid-major leagues would actually get multiple bids, and only two would get more than two bids (the CAA, 6, and the Valley, 3).
Of course, that’s just a projection, and may not be entirely accurate. But I think it captures the general gist of how it would break down. We’d be talking about a lot of teams with 6-10 or 5-11 records in Big East play, or 5-9 in ACC play, and still not a ton of mid-major at-larges.
Also note:
Last four in: N.C. State, Arizona State, Iona, Virginia
Last four out: Alabama, Oklahoma, Marshall, Providence
N.C. State is 2-5, 14-8 overall, and tied for last place in the ACC. (LAST PLACE!) Arizona State is 5-4, 15-7, tied for third in an awful Pac-10. Iona … okay, there’s a mid-major, but is anybody really excited to see an 8-3, 16-6 team from the MAAC? And Virginia… they’re actually 4-2 in ACC play, but I’m guessing they might not have beaten or played anybody of note, to be so low in even a 96-team field.
I’m trying to remember if I actually did argue that someone might try and increase the tournament like this during our earlier arguments on the topic…I may have, but i probably would have used 128 rather than 96 since its so much more binary sounding.
You gotta feel pretty vindicated in your anti-playoff stance if you’re David K. right now. Dude argued against the playoff in the face of almost universal opposition, both commenters at this site and pundits elsewhere. His argument that “the NCAA playoff will be larger than you’d like” is certainly supported by the presence of the same money-hungry inclinations that will cause the NCAA D1 Men’s tournament to bloat to a ridiculous 96 games.
I was thinking a while ago that there’s actually a pretty decent real-life illustration supporting David’s argument: the changes in Major League Baseball since they expanded from a 2-team playoff 40 years ago. At the same time that major league baseball’s playoffs have expanded from 2 teams to 4 teams to 8, their relative share of sports fan interest and dollars has steadily declined. Part of that must be due to the slowness of the sport in the video game era, plus increased interest and participation in niche sports, disproportionately taking kids from relatively-expensive baseball.
But a big piece of it must be that the season is long, and in an era of 8-team playoffs, dreadfully uninteresting. I recall being in South Carolina (Braves country) in late August 1993, when the Braves were starting their amazing run to overtake the Giants in the NL West that year, making the playoffs on the final day with 104 wins, to the Giants’ 103. There was a heck of a lot of excitement at the Braves beginning their improbable journey to the NL West crown.
These days, there would have been no interest in such a race, as the loser would be way ahead for the wild card, so there would be no suspense at all. These days, the best you get is the lame-ass Detroit Tigers facing the lame-ass Minnesota Twins in a one-game playoff to see who gets to be a speed bump on a real team’s journey to the World Series. The regular season utterly sucks in major league baseball, and expanded playoffs have a huge role in that suckitude.
Its worth noting that D1 football currently has a playoff that is the equivalent of the historic World Series structure (two best teams playing), with the difference being that the “best teams” in the early WS years had to win a league, while the NCAA “best teams” are the winners of a beauty pageant. But that difference may not be as big as it seems.
If we take it as a given, based on what has happened in basketball, that moneyed interests will eventually drive the NCAA D1 football playoffs to something like 24 teams, I think I’d prefer the current format to that, thanks anyway.