NCAA Tournament expansion would be bad for college basketball

If you have been paying attention, the drumbeat for expanding the NCAA men’s (and, presumably women’s) basketball tournament beyond the current 68 teams has continued this summer.

Earlier this month, the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee publicly acknowledged that it discussed the concept of a larger March Madness bracket during its three-day summer meetings.

Thankfully, the selection committee said an expanded NCAA Tournament “is not imminent.” However, led by SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, the forces agitating for a larger NCAA tourney are powerful and used to getting their way.

Already, the NCAA Division I Transformation Committee, which Sankey co-chairs, has called for raising the participation level across the board in NCAA postseason tournaments for sports in which over 200 schools field teams to 25 percent.

For men’s basketball, which had 363 teams in NCAA Division I last season, applying that 25-percent standard would mean a postseason tournament of at least 90 teams — and likely would require as many as 96 to create a workable bracket.

To put this in the bluntest terms possible, expanding the NCAA Tournament would be bad for the tourney itself and would be even worse for college basketball overall.

Let us count a “final four” worth of reasons that an expanded NCAA tourney would be a mistake:

1. It would reward mediocrity. With fields currently capped at 68 teams, there is already far too much major-conference mediocrity in NCAA Tournament brackets.

Consider: The last four at-large teams in the 2023 NCAA tourney were a who’s who of so-so — Arizona State (22-12 on Selection Sunday), Mississippi State (21-12), Nevada (22-10) and Pittsburgh (22-11).

That there were other teams of similar profile who just missed the NCAA tourney is a better argument for tournament contraction than expansion.

Sankey started leading the charge on NCAA Tournament expansion two seasons ago after Texas A&M (23-12 on Selection Sunday) was left out of the 2022 bracket even though the Aggies performed well in the SEC Tournament and made an unexpected run to the league tourney finals.

“The way they played at the end of the year, I firmly think they were one of the better teams in the country,” Sankey said to SI.com about the 2021-22 Aggies.

Well, the rest of that story was that Texas A&M in 2021-22 played a woeful non-league slate (ranked No. 308 in non-conference schedule strength according to kenpom.com) and lost eight straight SEC regular-season games between Jan. 15 and Feb. 15.

No matter how well Buzz Williams’ team played in the SEC Tournament, it was hardly a tragedy that a team with that overall profile did not hear its name called on Selection Sunday.

2. Making the NCAA tourney should not be a “participation trophy.” Sankey speaks of making the NCAA Tournament as if it is a party invitation. “How do we include people in these annual, national celebrations that lead to a national champion?” he told ESPN.com.

A tourney appearance should be earned based off of performance over a whole season. The more watered-down the qualifications required for NCAA Tournament entry become, the less securing a bid will mean.

The fact that teams have occasionally “gotten hot at the right time” and gone from the First Four to the Final Four — as VCU did in 2011 and UCLA in 2021 — is not a compelling argument for further lowering the standards of NCAA Tournament entry.

It is more a testament to the random nature of outcomes in a single-elimination basketball tournament.

3. Tournament expansion would further devalue the regular season. In the big picture, the single biggest problem facing college basketball is that the regular season carries so little consequence.

For my money, the three weeks of March Madness are the best on the American sports calendar. However, the overall college hoops season has become largely devalued because there are so few regular-season games whose outcomes have meaningful stakes.

In effect, “bubble teams” playing games late in the season that determine whether or not they will make the NCAA tourney play the only meaningful regular-season college hoops games in most seasons.

Adding 22 to 28 more teams to the NCAA tourney field each year would ensure there are even fewer regular-season games that carry actual consequence.

4. An unwieldy bracket would be a loser. Though the NCAA long denied it, what has made March Madness into a must-see national event is people filling out brackets to enter in tournament pools.

In a 96-team event, you would likely end up with 32 byes for the highest-seeded teams with 64 teams competing in first-round “play-in” games.

That bracket formulation would be way too messy. In our attention span-challenged society, you don’t want to make filling out a bracket too complicated.

All of which is why those who love college hoops should throw everything they have into opposing the forces working for NCAA Tournament expansion.