Expanding March Madness?

The Washington Post printed an interesting article talking about how many basketball enthusiasts want to see March Madness expanded. No doubt there are numerous brackets and systems people have created hoping that this will come to fruition. A larger bracket means more teams reaching the big stage who would otherwise not have much of a shot, such as William and Mary who will not make it unless they win the CAA tournament despite a great season with wins over Wake Forest and Maryland. The biggest reason, of course is money; more games means more money.

Before the NCAA runs to the bank, however, is this something that needs to happen? Why mess with success? College basketball does not suffer from the same problem as college football does. Everyone seems satisfied with the current system of deciding a national champion and while some people may have ideas of how they can make it better, there is no national movement to see this changed. If there is a criticism, it is the debate sparked by all the bubble teams that feel snubbed every year. Apart from the conference champions, there is no real system for deciding who gets an at large bid. Basically a bunch of people sit down and decide that team a is more deserving than team b for whatever reason. The diversity of the different teams and conferences as well as the random non conference scheduling really makes a definitive playoff system such as that which we see in pro sports impossible. Adding more slots will obviously allow for those bubble teams to comfortably make the tournament. This takes a lot of excitement from the push for March. It's a lot more exciting to see Notre Dame and Virginia Tech push themselves at the end of the season to hopefully get themselves across that threshold. Would people really tune in to watch William and Mary or Mercer push for that last 80th, 90th, or 100th spot? That would probably get about as much attention or even less than the play-in game between #64 and 65 currently does.

The more spots that are available, the less prestigious it is to earn one of those bids. The fact is that in a field of 65, it is huge for those mid major teams who win their conferences to make it to March madness. Those conference tournaments lose a lot of their luster and importance if multiple teams are already going to receive bids. That's why fans of the ACC or Big East are asking themselves why we have conference tournaments at all while fans of the CAA or Patriot League are watching every dribble. I understand the reasoning behind expanding the post season for many sports, but college basketball already has a 65 team playoff and every single team gets a chance to wipe the slate clean at the end of the season and qualify for March madness by winning their conference. To expand it any further would put more money in the pockets of those in charge but would decrease the importance of qualifying. That's not a fair trade in my book.