Pierce: This ‘is the last real NCAA tournament’

In a piece for GQ, Charles P. Pierce skewered the idea of tournament expansion.

And let’s not be naive. This is going to happen, and it’s going to happen on ESPN. (For reasons too arcane for anyone except business-school dweebs and broadcast executives, the NCAA can opt out of its ludicrous 11-year, $6 billion broadcast deal with CBS after this year’s tournament.) It’s going to happen despite the fact that the idea has been universally scorned everywhere outside of the NCAA itself and the fraternity of basketball coaches, who see it as a way to keep some of their less-than-competent brethren employed by fudging the measurement of success that making the tournament has become. In a way, it is very similar to the endless debates about campaign-finance reform. The reason we don’t have campaign-finance reform is that the people who least want it are the same people who will have to vote to enact it. The reason we are going to have a ninety-six-team NCAA tournament field despite all the huffing and blowing against it is that the only people who really want it are the people perfectly positioned to make it happen. And all they have to do is ride out the rage until the first ball goes up in the first game of the first revamped tournament. Then, they’re home free.

What we have tipping off on Saturday, then, is the last real NCAA tournament.

He goes on to pick Butler over West Virginia in the final.

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