I have recently heard on a local sports talk radio show (XL 950- The Fan) that the NCAA committee has all but officially announced that the NCAA college basketball tournament will be adding 31 more teams to their tournament brackets in the near future. This will bring the total invitations to 96 teams. There are only just over 330 teams in division I college basketball. I’m not exactly for sure how they are going to split the brackets up at this point, but I do think that this is an interesting idea on many levels.
First of all, let me start off by stating that I like this idea. However, there are plenty of arguments against the idea and they are all very valid. The number one things that comes to mind is “Why fix what isn’t broken?” I get this and in most cases I do agree with this concept, but in this case I tend to think that the NCAA is trying to take what is already very good and are going to make it perfect….. for now. Another great point might be “We want to add more teams to the college basketball tournament, yet we can’t even get a college football tournament at all.” My response to this is that we shouldn’t have to hold off our ability to make college basketball better just because college football doesn’t have a fair way to decide their champion. I kind of look at it like this…. Just because I have one neighbor (college football) that is screwed up, doesn’t mean that all of my other neighbors (all other NCAA college sports leagues) should also suffer a disability to help even our lives out. Two wrongs don’t make a left…. er right…. er, whatever. My big argument on this is the fact that college football can wait six weeks and have a bowl game, then say that it is bad for the kids to play football too deep into the semester, yet college basketball can add another round to it’s tournament and barely anyone cares. I digress, this is an argument for another blog.
In my opinion, I look at this from the head coaches’ view. As a college basketball coach you are (in many cases) judged by the amount of NCAA tournament appearances that you make it into. Sometimes the fans will rise and say “Who cares that Roy Williams has gotten our team into the tournament and won us some championships, it’s all about what have you done for me lately! If he doesn’t make it this year, then he should be fired! Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. By making this change nearly 30% of all college basketball division I schools will make it into the tournament. Nearly 10% of the rest of them will make it into the NIT. This is going to allow 128 of the 330 plus head coaches to add a tournament appearance to their resume’s every year. In a world where we are too quick to pull the plug on college coaches (cough, cough… Notre Dame Charlie Weis and Tyrone Willingham) it is nice to make it as easy on them as possible. No coach can do things to change a sports program around in a legal manner is less than 4 years. It just can’t happen. I think that adding the depth in the brackets can help by some coaches a little extra time and you might be able to see some of the smaller programs blossom a little easier since they might be able to have some more stability at the coaches position.
-Justin L. Stephens
