Source: Tournament expansion ‘will happen’

SPORTSbyBROOKS has a source that has confirmed that expansion to 96-teams is pretty much a done deal.

In the past week I’ve learned from a CBS source that the NCAA has privately informed its current March Madness television partner that 96 teams “will happen.” The change will likely take effect beginning next season. 2012 at the latest.

Earlier this month, I wrote the following on the subject of expansion:

An 80-team field would add 15 at-large bids which would more than compensate for the few teams every year that are snubbed. But all it’s going to do is create a new list of teams that are snubbed. That’s how it works.

The question is whether or not the current setup, which awards automatic bids to “inferior” schools from small conferences while passing over mediocre-to-good teams from bigger conferences is fair. Generally speaking, I think the current setup is fine. I can only remember one instance where a bubble team went on to the Final Four (George Mason, 2006), and teams that are passed over always have plenty of opportunity during the season to play themselves into an NCAA berth.

Plus, I worry that expansion is only going to make the regular season less important, which is something that BCS apologists argue with regard to a college football playoff.

You have a good thing going, NCAA. Just leave it alone.

In my interview with Seth Davis, he brought up a good point:

TSR: I want to ask you about tournament expansion. Do you think it’s a good idea?

SD: Well, competitively I think it’s a bad idea. What I will say is that I would not criticize the NCAA for doing it if they feel like they can get more money. It’s incredibly expensive to run athletic programs. The vast, vast majority are in the red. And if it means that they’ll be able to meet their expenses, and not have to cut non-revenue sports, I would not criticize them for that. But I think a lot of people are trying to make the argument that there are a lot of good teams that should be in the tournament and I think most of us are seeing the opposite – that there are a lot of mediocre teams that are getting into the tournament. I just think you diminish the achievement of getting into the tournament – basically, everybody would get in, and I just think that would diminish the achievement of getting into the tournament if you do that.

This is about money, and a bigger tournament will probably bring in more cash. This is good from the NCAA’s perspective, but there’s no doubt that this is going to hurt the competitiveness of Championship Week (where many bids are won and lost) and throughout the rest of the regular season.

Like I said in the aforementioned post, I could see how an 80-team field would work, but a 96-team field is going to expand the current field by 31 teams. This means that a lot of very mediocre teams are going to get in. And that’s not good, from a pure competitiveness standpoint.

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