Jul. 8—MORGANTOWN — We are on the doorstep of what may possibly be the dumbest decision since Coca-Cola came out with New Coke in 1985, which just happens to be the year the NCAA basketball tournament was first expanded to 64 teams.
What was such a great move then by the NCAA—it officially created bracketmania and March Madness—is now about to be thumped over the head by sheer ignorance.
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The Division I men’s basketball committee is currently meeting in Savannah, Ga. to discuss a number of topics, none more pressing than the expansion of the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments to an expected 76 teams. That’s from the current 68-team field.
We could go for days as to why this move is unnecessary, beginning with the overall dilution of the tournaments that would now include Power Five Conference teams—if expanded to 76—that are barely above.500 and may not have been good enough to qualify for their own conference tournaments.
You might say the expansion would allow more Cinderella teams into the tournament and isn’t the tournament supposed to be about the little guys ?
Just stop that right now. Adding eight more teams is nothing more than a power move by the power leagues for more money. The guess here is, on average, at least six of those eight schools every year would be from the Big 12, SEC, ACC, Big Ten and Big East.
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True, WVU would not have been snubbed last season if 76 teams were invited to play. Here’s who else from the men’s side wouldn’t have been snubbed: Ohio State, which finished 17-15. Indiana, which fired its head coach midway through the season. Nebraska, which went 7-13 in Big Ten play. Pitt, which finished 13th in the ACC.
Yeah, those additions would have made March Madness “really ” special.
As to why the NCAA, university presidents and the Division I men’s basketball committee is even considering expansion can be answered with one word: money.
By adding more games, the NCAA can drive up the asking price to CBS and Turner Networks for the broadcasting rights.
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That’s all this expansion talk is about.
Here’s the part I could never understand: Why would CBS and Turner ever agree to pay more if all it meant was televising games that featured bad teams ?
That answer came to me today, and the NCAA just may be a genius.
The original thought is there was no way TV ratings would improve for the NCAA tournament by adding more subpar teams to the field, at least not to the point to justify asking for a few million more dollars.
But, here’s the thing about college basketball, and this is what maybe the NCAA understands that the rest of us don’t, the sport is strictly regionally interesting with those regions spreading across the entire country.
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Meaning you have 50 states that make up roughly 70—give or take—regional pockets of interest only in specific teams.
Are there absolute college basketball die-hards ? Yes, but not enough to drive up TV ratings.
Example: With WVU getting snubbed from the tournament last season, doesn’t it make sense that TV ratings for the NCAA tournament were down in the state of West Virginia ?
Now, I don’t have those exact numbers, but I would bet every penny I own that the NCAA has its eyes on expansion based on that exact theory.
If Pitt and Villanova don’t make the tournament, you lose the TV viewers from Pennsylvania.
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If Oklahoma and Oklahoma State don’t make it, you lose the Sooner State’s viewership.
If Ohio State doesn’t make it, you lose the bulk of Ohio viewers and so on.
That’s millions of people every year who only care about their team, and if their team isn’t in, the hell with watching the NCAA tournament.
How do you fix it ? By making sure those teams make it in by expanding the tournament.
By allowing eight more teams in, that’s eight more regional pockets of population that now have a rooting interest in the tournament.
That’s more viewers. That equals higher TV ratings, even if those eight teams have no business being in the tournament to begin with. This isn’t about adding eight more deserving teams into the field. It is strictly about adding eight more brands into the field.
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Does that make it the right thing to do ? Of course not, but when has the NCAA ever really sat down and thought about doing the right thing ?
In fact, the NCAA has a track record recently of spending millions in legal fees fighting the right thing to do when it came to revenue sharing with the student-athletes and eligibility issues.
The odds that the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments expand, honestly, it’s likely 50-50 right now. A final decision for the 2026 tournaments is expected, possibly, before the end of July.
From a competitive standpoint, the NCAA tournaments would become a major joke if they were expanded.
The NCAA, and in turn its member schools, just may take that joke and laugh all the way to the bank, because this may just be a genius move.
