Extra point: leave NCAA tourney field alone
Tyler Diedrich
Issue date: 2/12/10 Section: Sports
If it's not broke, don't fix it. The NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament is not at all broken. In fact, it's a nearly perfect format just as it is.
Just take a look around in late March when students are studying brackets harder than studying for their next test, when teachers stop lecturing mid-class to check scores, and CBS takes a break from its normal programming to show a weekday afternoon tilt between North Carolina and Radford. It certainly is a much-better format than the travesty that is the computer-based Bowl Championship Series (BCS) in NCAA football.
But with rumors swirling about a possible (and by some reports, likely) expansion to a 96-team field, an unnecessary change to one of the most-entertaining sporting events in America could be on its way.
With the exception of the opening-round game, the tournament's 65-team field fits perfectly on a bracket. There are 16 teams in each region, meaning no teams have a bye and face the same number of steps to a national championship. Scheduling works out perfectly in the first two rounds, with half of the games in each round being played on Thursday and Saturday, and the other half on Friday and Sunday.
Thirty-one conference champions, plus 34 at-large teams selected by a committee, receive automatic bids to the tournament. Every year a debate arises over why one team made it and another didn't, which is understandable. But the bottom line is: if there is any question as to whether or not a team should be selected, it probably isn't a legitimate title contender, anyway.
These bubble teams have the chance to prove themselves worthy in the approximately 30-game regular season. If that isn't enough, there are conference tournaments in early March, which nearly all teams qualify for, and which are essentially play-ins to the NCAA Tournament if a team wins its conference. Expansion would just water down a regular-season schedule that is already too long.
How is it fair to the teams who prove themselves night in and night out, for the duration of the schedule, if some major-conference team with a losing conference record gets a third chance to prove itself?
Expansion would also deplete the consolation-prize 32-team National Invitation Tournament, instead likely awarding NCAA bids to the teams that would have otherwise been NIT-bound.
For those in favor of eliminating the NIT, consider the buzz and excitement around campus last year when the women's basketball team made its run to the WNIT quarterfinals. Sure, it was a consolation tournament, but it didn't seem like it.
While this could give more opportunities to teams in mid-major conferences like the Atlantic 10, there would also be undeserving schools from power conferences getting in. Last year, a 16-14 Georgetown team, which went 7-11 in the Big East, made the NIT.
The thought of such a team, which barely broke .500, making the NCAA Tournament is sickening. Even more so when a team like 26-8 Charleston (which settled for the third-tier College Basketball Invitational) is on the outside looking in, even in a 96-team field, regardless of which conference they play in.
Instead of diluting the integrity of one of the best events in American sports, mostly for the benefit of the money-hungry power conferences, the NCAA should keep the tournament format as it is. Keep the meaning in the regular season and conference tournaments while there is still some there.
e-mail: diedrts@sbu.edu
Just take a look around in late March when students are studying brackets harder than studying for their next test, when teachers stop lecturing mid-class to check scores, and CBS takes a break from its normal programming to show a weekday afternoon tilt between North Carolina and Radford. It certainly is a much-better format than the travesty that is the computer-based Bowl Championship Series (BCS) in NCAA football.
But with rumors swirling about a possible (and by some reports, likely) expansion to a 96-team field, an unnecessary change to one of the most-entertaining sporting events in America could be on its way.
With the exception of the opening-round game, the tournament's 65-team field fits perfectly on a bracket. There are 16 teams in each region, meaning no teams have a bye and face the same number of steps to a national championship. Scheduling works out perfectly in the first two rounds, with half of the games in each round being played on Thursday and Saturday, and the other half on Friday and Sunday.
Thirty-one conference champions, plus 34 at-large teams selected by a committee, receive automatic bids to the tournament. Every year a debate arises over why one team made it and another didn't, which is understandable. But the bottom line is: if there is any question as to whether or not a team should be selected, it probably isn't a legitimate title contender, anyway.
These bubble teams have the chance to prove themselves worthy in the approximately 30-game regular season. If that isn't enough, there are conference tournaments in early March, which nearly all teams qualify for, and which are essentially play-ins to the NCAA Tournament if a team wins its conference. Expansion would just water down a regular-season schedule that is already too long.
How is it fair to the teams who prove themselves night in and night out, for the duration of the schedule, if some major-conference team with a losing conference record gets a third chance to prove itself?
Expansion would also deplete the consolation-prize 32-team National Invitation Tournament, instead likely awarding NCAA bids to the teams that would have otherwise been NIT-bound.
For those in favor of eliminating the NIT, consider the buzz and excitement around campus last year when the women's basketball team made its run to the WNIT quarterfinals. Sure, it was a consolation tournament, but it didn't seem like it.
While this could give more opportunities to teams in mid-major conferences like the Atlantic 10, there would also be undeserving schools from power conferences getting in. Last year, a 16-14 Georgetown team, which went 7-11 in the Big East, made the NIT.
The thought of such a team, which barely broke .500, making the NCAA Tournament is sickening. Even more so when a team like 26-8 Charleston (which settled for the third-tier College Basketball Invitational) is on the outside looking in, even in a 96-team field, regardless of which conference they play in.
Instead of diluting the integrity of one of the best events in American sports, mostly for the benefit of the money-hungry power conferences, the NCAA should keep the tournament format as it is. Keep the meaning in the regular season and conference tournaments while there is still some there.
e-mail: diedrts@sbu.edu
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