If you could run the NCAA Division I men’s basketball tournament, how would you do it? Invite everybody? Go back to 48 teams? Get rid of automatic conference qualifiers? Bring back “play-ins”?
Here’s my idea:
First, choose the top 48 teams without regard to conference affiliation or conference championship status. These are the 1-12 seeds in each region, and get a bye in the first round.
Then, choose one team from each of the 32 conferences, and seed then 13-20.
This gets rid of one of the things that bothers me about the tournament: a “bubble team” gets in or out depending on whether or not a small-conference team that would make the tournament anyway loses its conference championship tournament to a “win or go home” team.
Now, the other part of “running the tournament”: handing out the money.
Currently, a considerable amount of the TV contract money is divided among the conferences based on how their teams did in the previous six conferences: it is one share for each team getting in, plus one share per win except in the Final Four. (Also note that when a team changes conferences, it takes its shares to its new conference.) The conferences are “expected to” divide their money equally among their basketball schools.
Here’s how I would do it:
$200,000 to each of the 320 or so basketball schools - that’s $64 million
$400,000 more to each school that gets in - $27.2 million
$600,000 more to each school reaching the round of 32 - $19.2 million
$1.2 million more to each school reaching the round of 16 - $19.2 million
$2.4 million to each school reaching the regional finals - $19.2 million
$10 million more (a total of $14.8 million) to each Final Four school - $40 million
(After that, they’re “playing for the gold trophy”.)
Total: $188.8 million - which is only $500,000 more than the NCAA is giving out using its current system.
64 teams. Each conference gets an AQ because I like to see the smaller teams get to participate. It makes the Tournament more fun, IMHO. The best teams still get to get to the Final Four, so it’s not hurting anyone.
Bubble team doesn’t get in? Too bad. Guess you should have won another game or two. Try not to get the NIT court slippery with your tears.
I’d like just to kick CBS Sports to the curb, but I guess that’s extreme. But whoever gets the Tournament has to make all the games available through multiple cable channels, or broadcast sub-channels*, or both. They can choose which game they want to feature, but they have to show a game, not jump around multiple games to where you can’t tell what game you’re watching. Also, the home broadcast station for each team has to show that team’s game at least on one of their sub-channels.
The first year I had an HDTV, the CBS stations I got (two or three of them) showed every game. They all had multiple games, and at least one had three sub-channels plus the main HD channel. It was too awesome, so naturally CBS killed it.
This reminds me of when Santa Clara beat Arizona (15 beating a 2) - Santa Clara’s next game was something like a 7 PM Friday start. One small problem: at 7:30, Cal (this was in Jason Kidd’s freshman year, two years before going pro) was playing defending champion Duke, and subchannels wouldn’t exist for about 20 years. CBS gave permission for the Santa Clara game to air on an independent San Jose station (which makes sense, as they’re pretty much right next to each other).
However, etv78 is right - every game is shown in its entirety somewhere. CBS made a big deal about this last year.
The “first four” games will be Tuesday and Wednesday on TruTV.
In the first weekend, CBS, TBS, TNT, and TruTV each show 8 games in the round of 64 (4 per day) and 4 in the round of 32 (2 per day).
The full schedule will be announced after the brackets are announced.
I do remember now that I couldn’t watch several games last year because we didn’t have TruTV. It was lumped in with some higher-priced package. So I’ll amend my point that they need to be available on the most basically available cable channels. (We’ve switched providers, and I have TruTV now. Thanks for your concern. :))
But really, showing the local teams on broadcast at least on a sub-channel should be a no-brainer. Monday Night Football is shown on broadcast as well as on ESPN in the home market, the NCAA should require this.
I’d drastically reduce the number of teams. I’d go back to 48 at a maximum. Filling in brackets for a 1,000,000 team tournament isn’t fun, it’s a work project with an Excel spreadsheet.