IMPORTANT LINKS!!!
-For Jon Teitel’s Conference Tournament Previews – CLICK HERE
-For the latest Hoops HD Bracket Rundown Video Podcast, where the Hoops HD Staff builds a bracket on the air and reveals it line-by-line – CLICK HERE
-For Jon Teitel’s latest bracket where he guesses the actual Selection Committee, and is one of the best in the world at doing so – CLICK HERE
-For our most recent Championship Week Video Notebook – CLICK HERE
-For the Hoops HD NCAA Tournament Team Sheets Index – CLICK HERE
-For all the Conference Tournament Brackets and Schedules – CLICK HERE
-For the Hoops HD NCAA Tournament Survival Board – CLICK HERE
-And to see and hear the greatest call in sports history – CLICK HERE
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THE FIELD OF 80:
-Let me start with this, because I think it is perhaps the most important point. The NCAA Tournament, as an event, transcends the sport of college basketball more than any other event transcends any other sport other than perhaps the Olympics or the Kentucky Derby. People who don’t watch or know anything about track & field, or curling, or skiing, or swimming, still watch the Olympics and still get into the events. People who don’t know the first thing about horse racing still get excited for the Kentucky Derby. The NCAA Tournament is a very similar event. People who follow college basketball very passively, or even not at all and are not college basketball fans, still LOVE the NCAA Tournament! And, before anything is done to change the NCAA Tournament, I’m BEGGING you to stop for a second, and assess why that is. What is it that makes so many people love this event?? And, let’s make an effort to not change the things about it that so many people love, because if you do, then not as many of them will love it anymore. Not as many of them will watch it anymore. That would make it less of a showcase for the NCAA, and that will not be good for the NCAA.
One of the proposed formats is an 80 team field, and using this morning’s JNG RANKINGS for both selection and seeding, the bracket below is what the field would look like. Take a look, and see what you think…
So…do you like it??
My answer is…meh. While I don’t COMPLETELY hate it, I don’t like it either.
In this format, there would be a full slate of 16 games on Wednesday for the Round of 80, and the television would work just like the Round of 64 games on Thursday and Friday. Rather than go to Dayton, they would go straight to their sites. Half the teams would get Thursday off before having to play again on Friday, and the other half would not. Perhaps the teams that need to play on Thursday would all play in the afternoon to give them a little more rest.
Here is what I like about it the least….
I think it alters the feel of the regular season. People who don’t intently follow college basketball say the regular season means nothing. I could not disagree more. I think it is, from top to bottom, the most exciting and important regular season of any major sport. The NBA, MLB, and even NFL have blah games throughout the season. College football’s regular season may be getting better with a 12 team playoff, but while it was great for some of the teams in the P5 conference, it’s hard to argue that the regular season was important for all the college football teams when on a regular basis we saw a team go undefeated and not get to play for the national championship because everyone simply assumed they weren’t good enough. In college basketball, right out of the gate, the games feel important. We at Hoops HD love the Under the Radar teams (we hate the term “mid-major” around here!!) and do a weekly podcast throughout the season that starts in November. If you’re a fan of an Under the Radar team, you know that November is your shot. James Madison ended up winning the auto-bid, but if they hadn’t then the win against Michigan State on the first day of the season would have proven to be hugely important. Expanding the field to 80 changes that. While teams can go through slumps and still make the field with a 68 team format, the majority of the teams that land inside the bubble needed to be good all year long. Or, at the very least, not br any worse than decent.
It also means that there are about eight to ten conferences that will likely rarely ever see the Round of 64. One of the special things about the Round of 64 is that by it’s structure, at least 26 or 27 out of the 32 games feature a power program against a good Under the Radar Program. For the diehard fan, that’s great! For the casual viewer, that’s great! To expand the field, and make that setup for far fewer of the games makes it less great for a lot of the fans. I also think that it’s unfair to ask a team who either won a conference championship or who played their way inside of the bubble to have to win another game to make the Round of 64. People say this will be better for the non-power conferences. That is objectively wrong!! I mean…LOOK AT THE BRACKET!! Look at the number of non-power leagues that either won’t make the Round of 64 at all, or that will have to win yet another game just to get there!! HOW IS THAT GOOD FOR THEM!!??
Now, let me finish with the same point I started with, and that’s how the NCAA Tournament greatly transcends the sport of college basketball in much the same way the Olympics does (or, at least used to). I have no idea who the best gymnast in Lithuania is, or who the best pursuit cyclist in Belarus is, but I like the idea that whoever it is gets to take part in the Olympics. If I were to turn on the Olympics and learn that those countries were not allowed to participate, and the reason that they were no longer there was the “bigger” countries wanted more of their own participants, my reaction would be “Well, that’ sucks!!” And, it WOULD suck!! And, it DOES suck!! And it makes a lot of people who only watch these events during the Olympics far less interested in doing so!!
We all know who wants to expand the NCAA Tournament, and we all know why they want to do it! And, it ain’t to make the sport better, and it ain’t to help out the non-power leagues! So before anyone goes and does that, they need to ask themselves this. ARE they making it better?? (and, the answer is NO). But more than that, are they changing what it is that so many people love about it and perhaps chasing them off?? And if that happens, then is this still as great of an event as it is now??
You know what so many people say about March Madness?? They say there is nothing else like it! You know WHY they say that?? Because it’s true!! For many reasons, there is nothing else like it! Not everyone lives in an NFL or NBA city, but a lot of people either went to college or lived in communities where a college was a central point of it. It engages EVERYONE! But, if you expand this tournament or severely restructure it, not everyone is going to say that there is nothing else like it anymore. Do you know why they won’t say it anymore?? The answer is simple. Because it will no longer be true.