NCAA President Charlie Baker has expressed interest recently in expanding the NCAA Tournament. If you’re a Michigan fan — or a fan of any team, for that matter — you should be adamantly against this possibility:
For college hoops junkies, March is a sacred time each and every year. No postseason tournament in the world quite matches up to the excitement of the NCAA Tournament in men’s basketball.
However, the president of the NCAA, Charlie Baker, recently expressed a desire to expand the tournament. If you’re a Michigan fan, you should be adamantly against this possibility.
After a few down seasons at the end of Juwan Howard’s tenure, Dusty May reinvigorated the fan base in Year 1 a season ago. The short-term goal was to simply make the NCAA Tournament. May obviously did that, as Michigan not only made the tournament but reached the Sweet Sixteen, along with winning the Big Ten Tournament championship. What would that barometer for success have looked like if every team with a pulse made the tournament?
In a direct quote from Baker, he expressed his desire for expansion the following way:
“If you have a tournament that’s got 64 or 68 teams in it, you’re going to have a bunch of teams that are probably among what most people would consider to be the best 68 or 70 teams in the country that aren’t going to make the tournament, period. The point behind going from 68 to 72 or 76 is to basically give some of those schools that were probably among the 72, 76, 68, 64 best teams in the country a way into the tournament.”
This makes zero sense to me, as you could erase each of the referenced numbers in the quote above and replace it with whatever number you’d like and the sentiment would still make sense. The goal should never be to get specific teams into the tournament. Making the tournament should be a reward for regular season accomplishments. The argument Baker outlined could hypothetically never be stopped at any given number.
A team finishing around .500 should never make the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team. Continued expansion of March Madness dilutes the importance of college basketball’s regular season. The NBA is the poster child for a diluted regular season — NBA teams regularly show minimal effort in the regular season because two-thirds of the league make the playoffs. What’s the point of playing the games at that point?
March Madness expanded from 64 teams to 68 in 2011. This created the idea of the First Four, which has largely been a flop. There simply isn’t enough purpose to it. The casual fan has a hard time watching two mid-majors play with the opportunity to be blasted into outer space by a No. 1 seed in the next round. Conversely, fans don’t typically enjoy watching two bubble teams play when neither deserved to make the tournament in the first place.
Michigan has excelled at making the NCAA Tournament in recent memory. Should the tournament continue to expand, that accomplishment would be watered down.
What are your thoughts on potential tournament expansion? Let us know down in the comments below.