It’s March, and with it comes the glorious madness that is the NCAA tournament. Sixty-five teams, covering three weeks, which is, for many college basketball fans, possibly the three greatest weeks of the year. Compared to any other sport professional or amateur, and certainly next to its counterpart college football, it offers us the most compelling set-up of any postseason. And yet this year it seems that momentum is picking up for the format, and specifically the number of teams, to change.

Why would you want to mess with perfection? In the interest of full disclosure I should point out that I’m a bit of a purist. As a baseball fan it took me several years to accept realignment, the wild-card and even interleague play. I’m still not convinced the Milwaukee Brewers should be in the National League. That said, I certainly wouldn’t argue that the changes were not good for the sport nor would I want them to go back to the way they were. However, there’s a large difference here. Interest in baseball was lagging, and change was necessary to drum up interest from new legions of fans. By all accounts, the popularity of the NCAA men’s tournament is not in question. So, why change?

The short answer is of course money. I have no argument with this from a purely capitalist point of view. If you go to 96 teams the NCAA has another weekend of games to sell to whatever network comes out of the next contract as the highest bidder. However, I certainly think that this would water down the competition to a level that would drag the postseason out with essentially bad basketball. There is already a place for this and it is known as the NIT. I’m not even convinced that total viewing would be up. A casual fan likely isn’t going to maintain interest for an entire month and even the hardcore fan is going to only sporadically watch a first round featuring such marquee matchups as Northwestern versus South Florida.

The official tourney has an excellent blend of underdogs from smaller conferences and the top third or so of the power conferences. Do we really need more games involving teams that struggle to reach .500 in their own conference? One argument I hear is that every year too many good, deserving teams, the so called bubble teams, are left out. Unless you have every team in the NCAA in the tournament there will always be an arbitrary cut-off line, and with it, disagreements over the final teams. As a fan of the Illinois Fighting Illini,
I can honestly say that I’d rather them go the NIT this year then get “rewarded” for a disappointing season by being one of 96 teams to make the tournament. How is this even an honor? At least there is something distinguishing about making the current format.

This brings me to my next grievance, one with every NCAA coach who supports this expansion. More specifically, Bruce Weber, the coach of the aforementioned Illini that I have recently been forced to support to an increasingly restless fan base. After the 2005 Elite 8 win over Arizona a few things happened. One, I will always have a man crush on Deron Williams, and two, I thought Weber should have five years before we had serious discussions about firing Weber. His recent support of the expansion has brought me to change my mind. Of course it’s now been five years so it hasn’t been a complete reversal.

He claims, among other things, that too many good teams feel like they have had unsuccessful seasons just because they didn’t make the tournament. This is along the same lines of the argument to hand out participation trophies to grade schoolers, which I could write another article on entirely. This also sounds like a man trying to help his job security. If you’re at Illinois, with one of the best recruiting bases in the country, and you can’t find your way into the 65 team tournament then it may be time to look for a job in a conference that more suits your abilities. Or perhaps you should spend more time recruiting then you do trying to sell this convoluted expansion as something that should be done to reward the hard work of the kids.

Now I’m not blind enough to think that Illinois is going to be a Kentucky or Duke and expect to challenge for the national title on a yearly basis, but I do think they should see themselves as a top 25 program that challenges for a spot in the Sweet 16. Is sneaking into a 96 team tournament the new definition for success? If that’s what Bruce Weber thinks then it is time for Illinois to look for a new coach. And if that is what the coach of any respectable basketball program thinks then they should be looking for a new job as well. It does not mean that we should consider revamping the greatest postseason tournament there is so that these guys can keep their fat paychecks. Nor should expansion be the lone consideration as ways to find new revenue streams.

If in the end like it usually is, all about the money, the NCAA should consider another avenue, one which would result in more games with better teams, not adding mediocrity. Jason Whitlock had what I consider to be a much better idea than anything I have heard from any other outlet. You can find that here: http://feeds.foxsports.com/cbk/story/add-more-games-to-tourney-not-more-teams

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