Good history lesson, but I think you missed some of the relevant points:
I am not sure of the magnitude, but I believe there are more teams and conferences now than in days past. As such, there should also be a broader definition of excellence that would dictate entrance into the tournament.
What makes Purdue’s complaint in 1979 any more valid than, say, UNC’s this year? Both teams were asking for a chance to prove themselves in the tournament. Yes, you could argue that the teams had a chance to do that during the regular season, but that is as true now as it was then. You could argue that if Purdue wanted to make it in 1979, they should have won more games. However, I find that argument specious because the teams play different opponents all season, and because many conferences will never be able to send all the “deserving” teams to the tournament. We are often comparing completely different things. It is a not zero-sum environment, nor are there any markers to normalize one team’s performance relative to another’s.
My real issue, in this case and in others, it the way we rationalize the significance of arbitrary standards and numbers. Imagine if Harvard set a hard cap on the freshmen it would accept from California. Or even if they said they will only accept 2307 students no matter what. Hard caps, particularly random ones (like 64 teams), do not serve to deliver the best outcomes or results. Those are achieved when we rely on attrition rather than selection. Specifically, we should let them play, or in Harvard’s case, let them go to class, rather than select those who will have the opportunity to do so. You are always better off seeing who actually does well rather than picking who you think will do well.
The whole “pussification” argument that you hinted at, and others specifically mentioned is bullshit. We are still finding a winner, so not everyone is rewarded. Equality of opportunity is the goal. That goal is more nearly realized when we give deserving teams more opportunities.
If you are committed to having the NCAA tournament function to find the best basketball teams that year, you are better off including more teams/games. If you want to find the odds of getting heads while flipping a coin, you are better off flipping it 1000 times rather than 10. Similarly, the process of whittling down NCAA teams functions better when there is a lower barrier of entry solely dependent on a minimum level of competence, rather than a arbitrarily high boundary.
Allowing more people to participate almost always mitigates judgment and decision-making biases (like the ones i mentioned before). Imagine if the selection committee had perfect evaluation/prognostication skills. The higher ranking teams would almost always win. Yet, the ranking are often far off the mark (see earlier link). You could argue that their prognostication is pretty terrible all things considered. What confidence should I have the the selection committee can tell me who the 66th and 65th best teams are if they cannot correctly predict the outcomes between the 9th and 8th seeded teams in the tournament. And while I understand the function of ranking is not solely to determine the winner of the game, the disparity between the “predicted” and actual results is astounding. That’s part of the reason no one will likely ever pick a perfect bracket.
So why rely on prognostication at all since we are so bad at it? Let the teams play. There is no reason not to since there isn’t a particular scarcity of time, or ability to have all the games. Keep in mind that what is being proposed is a small, incremental change that will only result in half the number of current teams playing one more game. I can’t see much downside there. In fact, most of the consequences are positive. The only real counter-arguments I can think of are those of resources (ie. we cannot afford to host 96 teams), practicality (ie. including every basketball team), and externalities (ie. reducing the importance/impact/excitement of the regular season). All the arguments that fall into those broad categories, while valid, do not outweigh the positives. Unless there truly aren’t 96 “good” NCAA teams, I don’t see how anyone is hurt by this.
For simplicity’s sake, you could just include all the teams in this year’s NIT tournament. There are no teams with a below .500 record. UNC has a .500 record (16-16), but I think you could make a strong argument that they are better than the vast majority of the teams in the NCAA tournament. Particularly since they are currently in the NIT finals.
I don’t think that there are 96 teams each year that are “good” enough to be deserving of entry into the tournament.
Another issue to think about is ratings. TV ratings for the first round are already lower than most people believe, and with this proposal they may well get worse, and that wouldn’t be economically good for the NCAA, would it?
Also…how can one equate UNC’s horrible season this year with Purdue’s in 1979 when Purdue was in a tie for first place for their conference title and didn’t get in and had a legitimate gripe due to restrictions on not only the number of teams that get in but how many teams from each conference were allowed in?
UNC was an ACC doormat this year…they deserved nothing and frankly probably shouldn’t have even been invited to the NIT.
I disagree completely. The assumption here seems to be that the NCAA will just pick the next 32 best teams and seed them 65-96 and run the same show as before. That isn’t what I’ve heard and isn’t what I expect.
First of all, the current seedings are a joke. Butler was 30-4, 18-0 in conference, winners of 22 straight games going into the tourney, and they get a five seed. Of course, they’re in the Final Four. Cornell was 29-5, almost beating #1 Kansas in Lawrence, and they get a 12 seed. Teams in lesser conferences can’t begin to compete for seeds even if they go undefeated because of the silly strength of schedule formulas used by the computer rankings. A team like Michigan State will get more credit in the rankings by losing (hypothetically) to a bad Indiana team than Cornell would by crushing a pretty good Harvard team on the road.
Look at the Big Sky conference. Montana got hot at the end of the season and got the automatic bid for the conference even though everybody knows that Weber State and Northern Colorado were the best teams in the conference.
Those who say that the major conferences are just going to get more bids may be right for the first year or two, but after the Minnesotas and Notre Dames and Wisconsins keep getting kicked around by small schools that will change. The second place teams from minor conferences are better than people think and have a lot more to prove than the six-eight place teams from the major conferences. I’d much rather see a Vermont play a ninth seeded Florida State in the first round than get crushed by a #1 seed right off the bat.
It’ll make for a much stronger field of 64, and show the NCAA and its fans where the real strength lies in basketball. This isn’t football, all you need in BB is seven or eight players.
Fair enough. I disagree though. As I stated before, only 12-15 have a realistic shot at winning it. Historically, the bottom 32 have never won. If your standard is “teams that could win it all”, you’d probably be fine with a 12 of 16 team tournament. Why bother with more teams at all if that is your goal?
Most of the first round non primetime games get pretty poor rating anyway. Either way, that is a marketing issue that I am sure the NCAA looked into long before floating the idea. In fact, part of the reason for expansion is to have more games to broadcast so that the NCAA can jump from CBS to ESPN/ABC/DISNEY. They want more games to air, so presumably, the money is there.
I am not comparing their seasons, I am comparing the logic of their complaints. They are both basically saying the arbitrary number of teams the NCAA selects is too low.
How can you say that when they will probably end up winning?
PS. and yes, they did have a pretty shitty season for their standards.
Now that I’ve been given some food for thought as it were, I’m not entirely certain of my initial stance.
I wish someone with more basketball knowledge than I possess that replied in agreement with my OP earlier in the thread would jump back in and logically refute the nefarious brickbacon, though. He’s starting to make sense!
I am on the fence about the expansion, but leaning towards in favor of expansion.
Reasons for expansion:
The top 64 teams will get into the tournament rather than the top ~48 teams plus ~17 teams that get automatic conference bids. The top seeds will have to play a good team after their first round bye. They will not have a warm-up game against a team like Arkansas Pine Bluff, Lehigh, East Tennessee. They will play a #16 or #17 team that probably would have been bubble team in the current format.
I can remember when the field expanded to 64 teams back in the early 80’s. IIRC, A lot of experts were against the expansion to 64 back then because of the field dilution.
And lets not forget about the kids. Most every kid works hard all season. Practicing hard, playing hard, and (hopefully) studying hard. Any time you can give 320 more kids a reward of going to the NCAA tournament is a good thing in my book.
The NCAA and NIT both have rules that they don’t allow sub-.500 teams into their tournaments (excepting conference tournament winners). Of course they could change this rule if they have trouble getting teams.
Since every conference (except the Ivy League) has a conference tournament, we have a 347 team tournament. The difference is now we’ll get the lesser teams on national TV, and the schools will get hundreds of thousands of dollars for it. This is why expansion is inevitable.
It will be a different expectation for the tournament. We’ll be treated to games that we know neither team has a chance to win the tournament. But hey, good for the kids. It’s “Everybody gets a trophy day.”
Not true, as I stated earlier. The NIT used to have this rule, but when the NCAA bought the tournament, they got rid of it. I’m not aware of any NCAA rule, but it’s a moot point, since there will never be fewer than 96 teams with winning records regardless.
Yeah, the seedings are so fair and accurate that of course they should determine which teams get to cheat by playing less games than everyone else. Of course they should determine which teams are “second class” participants.
Northern Iowa, Cornell, and Washington got screwed by the committee so they should have to play more games. Old Dominion and St Mary’s were outright better teams than their first round opponents, but the committee didn’t think so, so “second class participant” it is. Notre Dame was abysmal almost the entire year, so reward them with a first round bye.
One of the main reasons the tournament is so great is how fair it is. The reason making the tournament is so great is that once you are in, everyone has to play the same number of games. There are no “second class” and “first class” distinctions. Other than the play in game, which proves my point because clearly the play in game participants are “second class” compared to everyone else and the loser didn’t really make the tournament at all.
Like Carmady, it’s the first round bye that bother me.
Instead of a single-elimination tournament, with byes for some teams, I would have a round-robin stage and then the single-elimination. Divide the 96 teams into 16 seeded groups of 6. Teams play each other team in their group once, and then the top 2 teams of each group advance to a reseeded single-elimination tournament of 32 teams.
This setup has a lot more games. The winning team will have played 10 games total, but every team will get at least 5 games. The total number of games would be 271.
If I had my way, each conference would get two teams in the tournament: the team that wins the conference title, and the team that wins the conference tournament. No at-large bids at all. There would have to be tie-breakers in case three teams tied for the conference title, or two tied for the title and a third team won the tournament. The upside to this would be no more whining about which “bubble” teams made it in that shouldn’t have, or vice-versa. It might also pique more interest in the NIT since there would likely be some better teams that don’t make it into the NCAAs.
Based on a quick google, it looks there are currently 31 conferences with automatic bids, so doubling that would keep it pretty close to the current 64-team field.
No, I would prefer a 64-team tournament with one fewer at-large bid. I think it’s a travesty that two conference champions from smaller conferences get shunted to the play-in game backwater so that the 7th place team from the Big 10 (or 8th place team from the Big East, or whatever) gets to play in the NCAA tournament.
If the same team wins both conference title and tournament, then I would go with the runner up for the conference title, since they couldn’t possibly have a worse record than whoever placed second in the tournament.
Of course, then what happens if same team wins conference title and tourney, and there’s a tie for second place in the conference? Yeah, it’s not a perfect system.
If this happens, I can’t imagine watching a regular season college basketball game. Filling out a 96 team bracket sounds like work, not fun. With the NFL season creeping further into February, I can easily imagine this tournament killing my remaining interest in college basketball.
That’s my fear as well. I still say that this waters down the product and gives undeserving teams a chance to win the national title. Isn’t that what the regular season is for? Proving post-season worth (in any sport)?
