Like some April Fool's joke, word of the inevitability of a 96 team NCAA Div I hoops tourney escalated yesterday. Of course, we fans have all been clamoring for a hoops expansion, whilst not expressing any wish for a football tourney of any kind.
The talk around every water cooler has been, I wonder if Dayton would have made the Final Four if there was a 96-team tourney?! How would North Carolina have fared??!!
Because that is what 96 team tourneys would be. Slap the NIT teams between the lowest seeded at-large bids and next group of automatic bids, and you've got yourself a tourney. A team like NIT champ Dayton might make the final 32 or possibly the Sweet Sixteen, but that is the only practical impact of the additional teams.
Instead of the current 16th seeds playing number ones, they will get to play the current 9th seeds. Those 16th seeds now will be 24th seeds, and just think of the buzz when they are giving a close game to a 9th seed (yawn).
And if it goes to 96, 128 won't be far behind. Once upon a time the tourney was 48 teams and the top 4 seeds received a bye, and when top seeds like DePaul went down right away, there was a perception that it was caused by playing a team that has already played a game. I once did a statistical comparison as to whether getting to play a game helped get to the Sweet Sixteen for these seeds compared to getting a bye, and it didn't help, but lore is lore. When some 5th seed loses in a 96 team tourney, it won't be long that they blame the loss on the fact that the winner of the 12th/21st seeded game had an advantage of having a game under their belt.
Actually, I have always thought it made sense for the tourney to go to 68 teams. When, for no apparent reason, the tourney went to 65, it always seemed to me to be symmetric to have four games to fight for the right to party as the 16th seed rather than one. Give three more slots to the currently NIT-bound, and give four hopeless teams the chance to taste the sweet nectar of tournament success. See, I am not just stuck in the mud with regards to change, just want it to make some sense.
So if there was a football tourney, expansion talk would come up all the time. But as head of this pretend tourney, I am happy with 10 teams. I want to preserve the bowls and the ability of fans to attend them, and know that throwing some extra teams in the mix will only water down the importance of both regular season and tourney games.
So, despite the appeal of a 96-team football team tourney, I think I'll pass and just jump right to 256. We don't need an off-season, right??
