From 65 to 96???????

Upon opening up my Twitter account today, my jaw dropped seeing the report from Sports by Brooks that expanding the NCAA Men’s Tournament from 65 to 96 teams was a “done deal.” (Late edit to my blog post, the NCAA is denying this and saying there is "continuous dialogue about it). Considering that many people already de-value the importance of the College Basketball regular season, I myself started to think this format change would de-value it even more. However, after some thinking, I realized that there could be something positive made about of this probable change.

Currently, 65 teams are able to participate in the NCAA Men’s Tournament. 31 teams receive automatic berths, while a committee selects the remaining 34 schools. The automatic bid from each conference comes from the winner of each conference postseason tournament (usually a 3 or 4 day event) and the other 34 teams are composed of teams from power conferences (much to the delight of Billy Packer, Digger Phelps, and Jim Nantz). This potential change brings into the fold 32 more at-large selections; however, if the NCAA wants to get this right, they don’t necessarily have to have 32 more at-large selections.

Since the NCAA has taken over the National Invitational Tournament (NIT), the regular season champion of a conference that does not win its own conference tournament and is not selected by the NCAA as an at-large selection is automatically invited to the NIT. Now, fans of those “power conferences” will not like this; however, I think more emphasis should be given to those teams who win their conference in the regular season. Regardless of conference, every regular season conference champion should be invited to the NCAA Tournament in the new format.

Now, I know what you fans in the “power conferences” are thinking: “Don’t do that. All these little conferences will have their champion tank in their conference tournament so another team can get in.” Actually, that opinion would be wrong and make you a hypocrite. College Basketball coaches and players have a sense of pride and they are not going to "tank" to let perhaps a bitter rival make the NCAA Tournament.

In fact, I’ll even point you to two power conferences in 2009, where sixth seeded USC won the Pac-10 conference tournament, going from a NIT team to a NCAA team (and no, nobody tanked in order for them to win). In fact, the SEC had a similar tournament, as Mississippi State came out of nowhere to win their league’s automatic bid, and knocking another team out of the big dance. So please don’t entertain me with that thought.

In addition, I checked some records, and only four regular season conference champions in one-bid leagues in 2009 failed to win their conference tournament and were subsequently sent to the NIT: (Weber State-Big Sky, Bowling Green-Mid American, Jacksonville-Atlantic Sun, and UT-Martin-Ohio Valley). Now, I understand four may seem low, so I’ll even be more realistic and go with a number of six to eight in a normal year, but that’s still 24 to 26 extra bids available for those borderline mid-major teams that get squeezed more and more each year since George Mason’s incredible run in 2006 (OK now I’m getting to opinionated) and for any other team that made last year’s NIT. Please see the following link for last year’s NIT bracket. (http://www.gocreighton.com/pdf5/389502.pdf?ATCLID=3691532&SPSID=89381&SPID=69&DB_OEM_ID=1000).

So please NCAA, give the regular season more importance and put the NIT to bed once and for all.

I welcome your thoughts in the common section or on my twitter page at http://www.twitter.com/JoeinBugaha