According to Wikipedia, the field had to expand from 64 teams to 65 in 2001 because the Mountain West Conference, which had split from the Western Athletic Conference a few years earlier, became eligible for an automatic bid for its conference winner.
Since there are fewer than 64 conferences and many teams other than conference winners are included, it would seem that the simplest solution would be just one less at-large team to keep the total at 64.
So what was the real reason they decided to go to 65 teams rather than keep things at the nice 6th power of 2 that had worked before?
More to the point, the Moutain West Champ is less likely to bring as many fans (and therefore viewership and revenue) to the tournament than a middle-of-the-pack power conference school.
Well, that probably is included in what is defined as “better,” but, really, the stands will be filled no matter who’s playing, and the TV money is going to be the same. Ratings are unlikely to take much of a hit, either – fans may grumble that their team missed out, but they’ll still watch, if only to complain that their team could have beaten the champ if given the chance.
The colleges, however, have all the clout in the NCAA, and they get paid big money for making the tournament. The Big East gets a bonanza this year by placing so many teams in the field; you can be sure not only the colleges, but the conference are delighted at the cash they are going to get.
More to the point, the ACC is disappointed they have only four teams in the tourney: could you imagine how pissed they’d be if NC State stayed home while teams like U. Albany, Monmouth, and Hampton got in?
Every conference gets one automatic bid and you fill out the remainder of the 64 slots with the best remaining teams. Expanding to 65 makes no sense. Somebody gets left out no matter how many slots they have.
I have still not seen a reasonable explanation of why they decided they just had to go to 65 teams.
Every conference gets one automatic bid and you fill out the remainder of the 64 slots with the best remaining teams. Expanding to 65 makes no sense. Somebody gets left out no matter how many slots they have.
I have still not seen a reasonable explanation of why they decided they just had to go to 65 teams.
Yep. There’s a ‘play-in’ game for the 64 and 65 seeds. The winners get the dubious honor of getting their heads beaten in by a number one seed the next night.
Each NCAA tournament slot is worth money to the schools and conferences who get into the tournament. The further you go in the tournament, the more money you get. (IIRC, the distribution of money for the play-in game was originally set up so that no one would lose their NCAA payment; if you lost, you got next to nothing. This was due to change eventually.)
If you lost a slot to the Mountain West Champ, you lost this money. And you’ve probably lost more than the Mountain West champ would get, since your schools would go further in the tournament.
Thus, the big conferences were dead set against reducing the number of at-large slots, because it meant reducing their potential payment.
From a competition point of view, that extra at-large slot was more likely to go to a team that has a legitimate chance to advance in the tournament. If the tournament really picked the top 64 teams in the country, most of the 15th and 16th seeds would never be chosen and, if you notice, most of them are the winners of their mid-major conference.
Reducing the at-large field would mean you’d be cutting out one of the top teams in the country in favor of one that would never get beyond the first game. The NCAA is obligated to include all Division I conferences, but places like the MAAC or the Patriot League or America East are just not going to produce a champion, and are even unlikely to win a game. So the play-in removes one patsy team and allows a better team to be in the tournament as an at-large.
That’s just stupid, imho. Had it been my decision they would have just dropped one of the at-large bids. The big conferences already have a very sweet deal going with this tourney, and as for the team on the bubble that doesn’t make it, well, they shoulda won a couple more games and then they wouldn’t have been on the bubble. Them’s the breaks. Jeez. Really, to be fair they should have play-ins for ALL teams in ALL conferences. Can’t be leaving anyone out now. :rolleyes:
No. The play-in is to the two lowest seeded teams in the field. This year, it’s Hampton from the MEAC and Monmouth from the Northeast Conference. It will change from year to year, depending on the strength of the teams.
But by adding the Mountain West conference to the NCAA’s list of automatic bids, it added an extra conference champion, and thus created the problem: either leave out a better at-large team or add the play-in. For purposes of money and to provide better competition, the play-in was the choice.
(I suppose they could have withdrawn a conference’s automatic bid, too, but that would not have been popular, either.)
You are under the mistaken presumption that the NCAA is a objective party. The NCAA operates in the best interests of the schools. The bigger conferences and bigger schools have a larger influence. If you don;t like that, perhaps a capitalist society isn’t for you.
The NCAA tourney existed for 15 years as it was, with 34 at-large bids. By reducing the number of bids, you’re essentially asking the other 300 odd schools to surrender a possible shot at the championship due to the political choice of the 8 teams who decided to break away from the WAC. If they were drawing it up from scratch, they probably would keep it at 64 teams, but the fact that it was established as it was makes forcing the vast majority to surrender something due to the actions of the very few a really impossible sell.
The tournament is there in order to make money first and crown a champion second. That play-in game is less than ideal, but it’s the solution which best serves the two main goals of the entire concept.
And it sets a precedent. So the next time a new conference is formed, there’ll have to be 2 play-in games. Eventually there’ll be a whole pre-tournament tournament to determine the bottom 8 seeds. Yes, I understand the forces behind this decision. They’re the same forces that are behind the even-more-ridiculous BCS in Div 1 football. Just because something’s inevitable doesn’t mean it isn’t ridiculous.
Clearly this concept is utterly absurd. I’m sure Southern, Albany and Oral Roberts would be livid if they were “forced” to play an extra nationally televised game that they can actually win as the field expands.
To answer the question:
Under the rules, the committee must select the 34 “best” teams once the conference winners are determined (by tournament in all but the Ivy League). This rule was not changed when the new conference was introduced, ergo there are 65 teams.
Here are the conference champions, since 1999: UNLV, BYU, San Diego State, Colorado State, Utah, New Mexico, and San Diego State this year. Air Force has been an at-large bid twice the last three years. Wyoming (who took SDSU to overtime in the title game this year) and Texas Christian are the other teams.
OK - one more question about the “play-in” game. If the winner of the play-in game (Monmouth) plays Villanova in Philadelphia, why did they have the play-in game in Dayton?