"Anything for a Buck or Two" is the NCAA´s motto, so why not?
How about letting all teams in to the Tournament, but instead of teams getting seeds have all brackets drawn at random (lottery style)? The draw could be a celebrity-studded (and advertiser-focused) spectacle along the lines of the Oscars and WrestleMania, maybe hosted by Ryan Secrest, Megan Rapinoe and Charles Barkley, with musical performances by Tyler Perry and Snoop Dogg. Hey, if it moves units of shoes, cars and soda pop, who cares if it is a bad idea for collegiate sports?

Last edited by GW Alum Abroad (1/03/2023 10:27 pm)

The NCAA Tournament should be 64 teams. Any more is just pure greed.

I am not generally a fan of expanded playoffs, as it waters down the regular season; however it is more in line with the percentage of teams that make the post season in the professional leagues.  I could probably live with it.  

I've actually been a supporter of an 80-team model (not 90) for some time (even if I'm alone on that island).  My arguments:

1. It would eliminate the NIT from relevance.  Even though GW won the tournament, as we have long debated, how important is this tournament?  Is there that much of a difference in quality of the NIT teams from the bottom quarter of the NCAA field?

2. The model for 80 teams would be to follow the lead of conferences that have double-byes for the top teams in their conference tournaments.  16 teams would get double byes in the 80-team model.  These would be the conference champions of all of the top "x" conferences (probably the top 8 or even 12) and then the next best teams to get to 16.  The remaining 64 would play two games to get into what would be the final 32.  This would also make conference championship games crucially important and even more watchable than knowing that both teams in a Power conference tournament are already in the field.

3. Unlike the current First Four, there would be no stigma of a play-in game.  

4. From a television perspective, we'd get to see more close games in the first two rounds, where blow-outs by top seeds are not uncommon.  Every game would be like a 5 vs. 12 (or closer) game.

5. This would add more teams from the mid-major realm.  Certainly we would see more power conference teams as well, but the teams normally on the bubble include plenty of mid-major teams.

6. Finally, we're not adding any new rounds.  It's still 7 rounds, with the exception that the first round has 32 games instead of 4.  

OK...fight me on this.

Am intrigued by BGF's model though I would offer the following tweaks:

1) I would award double byes to 10 schools and single byes to the next 18 schools.  That would leave 52 schools (in an 80 school field) playing in the first round, with these 26 winners joining the 18 single bye schools in the second round.  These 22 winners join the 10 double bye schools in the round of 32.  I prefer this to the 17th best team being treated the same as the 80th best.

2) In some cases, a conference tournament champion may be deserving of a single or double bye but in other cases, it's the conference's regular season champion that's more deserving.  Rather than say that one or the other receives anything automatically, I would propose one of the following:

a) Unless the regular sesaon and tournament champion is the same school, allow the conference basketball coaches to vote on which school should receive the more desirable seed between the two schools, or

b) Allow a selection committee to make this determination

No!