Once again, the NCAA has ruined something. This time, they ruined the best sporting event in the world: the NCAA Tournament.
On Thursday, the NCAA voted to expand the NCAA Tournament to 76 teams, up eight from the previous field of 68. This doesn’t seem like much on paper, but it’s going to completely alter the “First Four” which will now be a 24-team field before whittling things down to 64.
Again, some might say that 76 teams is not much of a change, but that ruins the “bubble” and it makes the bottom third of the field less stable. If you thought you were clearly in, you might have to win a game just to make the 64-team field when in a different year, you may have been a 9-seed. The bubble is not going to be nearly as controversial and the tournament feels a little less exclusive.
A 24-team “First 12” is going to be insane and this feels like a money-grab by the NCAA. They felt the need to “fix” something that wasn’t already broken.
The NCAA caught a bunch of flak from fans when they expanded the tournament to 68 teams, but we all adjusted and it became a decent little appetizer. The “First Four” was a nice intro to the NCAA Tournament, but rarely did those games draw huge audiences. There has been the occasional classic and maybe a team or two that made a run, but it’s not worth expanding that.
Twelve games being played before the first round of the NCAA Tournament just ruins March Madness. It almost feels like a second tournament at that point.
Also, how are we supposed to fill out brackets with 12 teams still waiting to make the final field of 64? It’s going to be absolute chaos next year.
The NCAA Tournament wasn’t broken, so why fix it?
You know how the old cliche goes: If it ain’t broke, why fix it? Apparently the NCAA Tournament didn’t take that into consideration when voting to expand the field once again.
When it was a 64-team field, it was the closest thing to perfect that we could get. When it was expanded to 68, a lot of people were opposed, but it’s since been adjusted to. Now that it’s 76 teams, we have to start talking about how the NCAA is going to ruin something over money.
For years, the NCAA has been making decisions that are more to their benefit than the student athletes’. That doesn’t sit well with me.
Once again, the NCAA puts its greedy hands all over something that didn’t need to be touched.
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