The 96 Team NCAA Tournament: A Plot Against America

4096 team tournament. Heck yeah.

I've got $50 on Harrison County Waste Technology Career Development Center over Three Rivers Church Seminary Prepatory Institute.

we can't come up with a 6-8 team NCAA football play-off? That is ridiculous.

If you can't stand behind our troops, stand in front of them

WOTS is that they have new uniforms, so they have to be considered a legit dark horse. NWRVC specializes in large animal veterinary medicine, so their mascot is some guy in a big rubber glove.

Obviously a 65-team tournament has been nothing short of perfect. But believe it or not but I'm not totally against the 96 team format IF 2 things happen:

1) They eliminate the NIT (which I believe is the sparkplug for this idea to begin with)

2) They make the bottom 64 teams "play-in" to the real first round of the tournament. This scenario would create more cinderellas and reward the top 32 teams for being good with one less game.

I don't think it would be a huge deal if they do this because it eliminates the most pointless tournament in the NIT and creates more cinderella possibilities in that any of 32 additional teams could get hot and pull off some upsets.

Here's a suggestion: just shorten the regular season and allow all 300 or whatever teams to be in the tournament. You start the weekend after the Super Bowl and go from there. Is that something you'd be interested in?

Olivier Saint-Jean

there might be more David & Goliath stories in March with 96 teams than 64.

By adding another 32 teams with borderline winning records (what happens to the NIT?), maybe we'll see something ri-goddamned-diculous like an Albion College knocking off North Carolina or something. Chaminade over Virginia anyone?

OK, I know. The NCAA is trying to sell us some democracy and a sense of fairness to all schools, and the problem is that by March time the American public is yearning for something entirely different, namely Darwinism, "Survival of the Fittest" and the public humiliation of the arrogant - which a 64 team tournament already provided us in abundance.

Americans love to see the underdog win and the heavy favorite taken down a peg so we can collectively gasp "WTF?". It's Spud Webb over Dominique Wilkins for the NBA Slam Dunk contest. That kind of thing.

I prefer the more exclusive club of 64 teams, but with 96, there *might* more dramatic upsets, which is part of the appeal.

So yeah, I'll be cheering for Albion.

They need to realize the main reason that the whole march madness thing works is because of the brackets. All of the fringe basketball fans get sucked in because of their brackets and work pools and such. Nothing is more american than the receptionist who knows nothing about college basketball going 30/32 in the 1st round and upsetting the whole office because she has the lead and had no idea until she showed up for work on Monday. While you poured over the ESPN team bios and did nothing at work all week, submitted 2 brackets for your "sleepers" and you were still eliminated on Saturday night. This is the main reason this proposal will ultimately fail.

"is that what America is about, you do your best you get the job."

I'm also reminded of a comedian (forget who it is) who rants about how every kid now-a-days is told that they are special. It's bs, not everyone should get a medal for participating. This country used to be a great country but now it seems that everyone wants to be special and that these terms are just being thrown around.

Most kids aren't special, no one wants to hear that their kid is average or god forbid DUMB, but 90% of the people in this country cannot be above average because WTF is average?

/rant

i'd totally get up at 4:02 AM for Fred's Bartending School vs. Ferris State. CCHA pride and whatnot.

not to be contrarian here, but i kinda like the idea of expanding the tournament to all of division 1...there are - what? 330 teams? 350? adding one more weekend to the tournament gets us to 256 - you still pick 64 teams the way you do now, and those 64 get to host the first weekend. some of them host four teams, some get three.

like last season, we would have hosted, oh...let's say eastern washington, the citadel, and akron, to get to the 'real' tournament.

i don't have a problem with that - at the least it dispels all the should have / shouldn't have crap that we have to discuss for two days after selection sunday, and it puts an end to all the mediocre mid-majors complaining about not getting in...you really can't complain any more. win or else.

and it's not fundamentally any different than the "let's settle it on the field" stuff that gets trotted out in favor of a college football playoff. i guess i don't see the difference.

Is this a classic marketing ploy?
To wit:
Leak "96 team tournament is a done deal"
Outrage occurs
Knowing sources quash the information, calling it speculative, or an option we're considering.
68 team tournament proposed with 4 "opening round" games is announced.
Outrage is minor, because it could have been a lot worse.
ESPN gets four games to air on Tuesday or Two and Two on Monday/Tuesday or Tuesday/Wednesday.

It's also worth remembering that as recently as 1991, there were play-in games, three of them to be precise, which left three teams out of the tournament because they didn't win their play in game. Somehow, this is different from the opening round game.

A 96 team tournament simply rewards mediocrity. I could care less about those mid-majors and bubble teams who whine about being left out. Either you get it done or you don't. Who cares about working hard to get to a certain point; hell, let's just include everyone so no one feels lonely. If the NCAA tournament goes to 96 teams, I'll lose complete respect for the tournament.

It's one thing to expand by 4-8 teams (not sure how you would do that though) but once you start pulling in 32 more teams the odds are that you are going to be taking teams that weren't even close to 500 in their conference. We already see it now where some teams go 8-10 in their conference and get in. Expanding by 32 would mean teams that are 7-11 and maybe even 6-12 start getting in.

It seems to me the only people that really want this are the coaches - especially those that just miss getting into the ncaa tournament.

If the conference tourneys end on saturday/sunday when is the first round? The following tuesday and wednesday?? I don't think you play all 32 games on the same day (you could but I'd guess TV would want to maximize the amount of games they can show). So then what, you wait a week to begin the second round on Thursday? If I'm a coach of a team that got a first round bye, I probably wouldn't be to thrilled to see my team have anywhere from 10-12 days off between games. And if your a high ranked school from a 'mid-major' conference whose conference tourney ends on a weekday, you might have 2 weeks off between games.

I don't think this idea (if implemented) would be about equality and rewarding mediocrity so much as it would be about generating more money. I don't think many people in the NCAA really care that much about making sure that the 2nd-best team in the Ivy League has a good shot at getting into the tournament.

Isn't it "Milk, I am your Mother?" I know it's semantics, but that would be one happy bull.

...thus the proof that a college football playoff would never satisfy everyone.

Congress thinks 8 football teams is enough to definitively determine a college football champ.

Well, we now see that 60+ f'ing teams aren't enough for everyone to be happy in a basketball playoff.

Soon after college football turns to a playoff system and it's not Brian's or anyone else's dream-playoff-scenario, people will be screaming that they got gypped. Then they'll have to expand to 16 teams, then 32...

Think that's crazy? So is 96 team basketball playoff.

And proof of what Einstein said: 'Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the universe'.

Apparently, the Selection Committee, at long last, has responded to the gauntlet thrown down by the BCS committee, who challenged them to design a dumber(er? -est?) means of choosing a champion. And yea, verily they have done it. "What, you say none of our lowest-seeded teams has ever beaten our highest-seeded teams? Well, clearly the only solution can be to expand the number of cannon fodder teams then. This is certain to end well." It just goes to show you, some people can't leave well enough alone.

This has to be a joke, right? Those guys at the NCAA are such pranksters!

At least the coaches would have a great chance at staying employed (since all would make the tournament every year).

...and then still seriously implement it. But then, no one can account for the lack of shame and stupidity the NCAA has.

Seriously, if this isn't the worst idea of worst ideas that was ever worsely thought...

I think the way the NCAA Tournament is set up now is perfect. It allows at-large teams to get in and small school conference champions to get in and it's a really good fit. If you make it a 96 team field then you would have crappy at-large teams getting in and it would take away the quality of basketball away that is there now.

One idea that's been kicked around that I wouldn't absolutely hate is to give both regular-season and conference tournament champions auto-bids. That would be about the only way expansion to 96 might not be an awful idea. (The number of at-large teams wouldn't grow much as a result - depending on how many teams get both championships you're probably looking at 10-12 extra at-large teams.) But opening it up to someone who goes 6-12 in the Big East is insane.

If they want to expand the postseason, my recommendation would be to add the first-round NCAA tourney losers to the NIT and make a 64-team bracket there. (Logistically, it might be easiest to have the losers in a particular pod play each other and have the direct-NIT qualifiers play a couple rounds before merging the brackets.)