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.

I’ll be up front. I don’t like the idea of expanding March Madness. But it seems inevitable, given the money involved. Dana O’Neil digested the spin-job presented by the NCAA’s Greg Shaheen, who explained how a 96-team would work.

The convoluted plan goes like this: The tournament would begin on a Thursday or Friday, as it always does, but only teams seeded 33 through 96 would play on those days. The winners would face teams 1 through 32 on Saturday or Sunday.

The winners of those games advance to the second round, to be played on Tuesday and Wednesday, with the Sweet 16 continuing Thursday and Friday, as always.

In other words, if we had had a 96-team bracket this season, ninth-seeded Northern Iowa would have been playing its third game in six days when it squared off against top-seeded Kansas.

Hero Ali Farokhmanesh would have been playing on Gumby legs.

And yet the NCAA insists that 96 teams won’t change a thing, when logic says it will change everything.

All right, that’s how it would look (ugly) — how to people feel about this idea?

Dana O’Neil, ESPN: The NCAA best hire one helluva public-relations firm to promote the drivel that will be the regular season, because all of those great nonconference games that dot the calendar in November and December are going to disappear. What good does it do a national program like Kentucky or North Carolina to play a tough nonleague game? A few patsies, one or two traditional rivalries, a respectable run through the SEC or the ACC, and you’re in. Consider: The Tar Heels would be in a 96-team field this year. Connecticut, too. Easily. And yet the NCAA doesn’t like the term “watered-down” to describe a potential expanded field. Perhaps “diluted” is more palatable?

Ben Doody, The Trentonian: But the tournament will lose a lot of its appeal if it gives 32 teams a bye while the other 64 have to play on the first day. One of the charming things about the tournament as its presently constituted is that Kansas needs to play the same number of games to win the tournament as Robert Morris — that on the first day, upsets like Ohio over Georgetown are possible. This is corny but entirely true: Those upsets give the tournament charm, and that charm is the reason casual sports fans — or better yet, people not even interested in sports — become college basketball fans in March. Expanding the tournament has the potential to turn away those fans in droves, yielding the NCAA’s TV partner — whether its CBS, ESPN or someone else — lower ratings. That could easily mean that by the time it’s time to negotiate the next tournament TV deal, the value of the deal will be less than it would have with a 65-team field… College basketball’s regular season is already under siege from critics for having little significance. If a team like North Carolina can have its most disappointing season in decades and STILL make the NCAA tournament, critics will rightly argue that at least as it pertains to successful teams from power conferences, what goes on between November and February will be a string of exhibition games.

Eamonn Brennan, ESPN College Basketball Nation Blog: In the end, whether or not expansion is eventually seen as a success will depend on one major outcome: Whether people watch the new first-round games. And I don’t mean you, the college basketball sports blog reader, or me, the college basketball sports blogger. I mean the casual fan: The guy who fills out a few brackets every year but doesn’t really freak out about it. The group that sneaks out of the cube farm and heads down to the local bar at lunchtime on Thursday because it looks like Villanova is going to get upset by a No. 15-seed. Dolores, the woman who keeps photos of her cats on her desk. Will those people watch? Or will the NIT-level play on hand — and the less immediately shocking nature of potential first-round upsets — turn them away, souring them on the tournament in general? Whether we eventually view expansion as a disaster (from both a financial and entertainment standpoint) or as another worthy step in the tournament’s long evolution will depend entirely on this new first round.

Dan Shanoff: The essential qualities of the NCAA Tournament — rather than some arbitrary number — are born out by the fact that the Tournament has expanded from 8 to 16 to 32 to 48 to 64 to 65. And I’m sure the pundits either have — or would have — complained all along the way. In vain. … The reality is that most fans don’t pay attention to college basketball until March anyway. And, aside from the die-hard fans who make up about 5 percent of the fans who follow March Madness, those that do tune in before March are watching marquee games between powerhouse teams whose inclusion in the NCAA Tournament field isn’t in doubt. If anything, people watch before March to get a sneak peek of teams they should be betting on IN March. And with 32 more teams, that means that fans who want to know the field have to watch that much regular-season basketball. Meanwhile, the chance to earn a bye gets expanded beyond the four 1-seeds to the Top 32 teams in the country — something worth playing for in January and February. … Let’s see: If Ohio can beat Georgetown, I’d be curious how the 8 teams that finished ahead of Ohio in the MAC might do. Most early-round NCAA games aren’t exactly pretty basketball played at high levels; they’re street fights. Let’s go back to the foundational point: As long as games are close at the finish or won on buzzer-beaters or feature seed upsets or “no-name” schools beating “name” schools, fans will be happy. And that will happen frequently — perhaps more often, given the general parity between teams ranked between 1 and 100.

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:

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The NCAA is considering expanding its basketball tournament, and one option is to expand the field to 96 teams.

The NCAA is exploring whether to opt out of its current 11-year, $6 billion TV deal with CBS and expand the men’s basketball tournament field from 65 teams to 68 or 96 teams, according to a report in Street & Smith’s Sports Business Journal.

The publication obtained a copy of a request for proposal sent from the NCAA to potential broadcast bidders late last year. In the 12-page proposal, the NCAA outlined a 96-team split format where an over-the-air network pairs with a cable network to broadcast the tournament. CBS and Turner Sports are in discussion for a joint bid. ESPN and Fox are considering whether to do the same.

In the proposal, a field of 68 would add three “play-in” games. In a 96-team field, 31 games would be added.

Florida coach Billy Donovan says “there is nothing wrong with expanding,” while FSU coach Leonard Hamilton says that many of the teams in the NIT are better than the teams that get into the NCAA tournament.

The idea has its opponents too, like Dick Vitale (who calls it “ludicrous”) and collegeRPI.com creator Jerry Palm (who says that expanding “would just add more unqualified teams to a tournament that is already full of them.”)

I could see how an 80-team field could work and it wouldn’t do much damage to the current format. Say you have 32 teams (16 games) on Tuesday night. Those winners would go on to join the top 48 teams and play on Thursday. Most of the teams playing on Tuesday night would be small conference champs that got an automatic bid, or the very last mid-major or power conference teams that barely got in.

The quick turnaround from the Sunday night selection would be tough. Those 32 teams would have to travel to a neutral site (or 16 visiting teams would have to play on the road) with only 24 hours notice.

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.

Photo from fOTOGLIF