NCAA Talk about Expansion

There has been a lot of talk in the past about expanding the NCAA Touranment. I am against the idea. The tournament is perfect at 6 rounds. When the Great West Conference gets an automatic bid in 2020, the tournament will likely expand by one team again so that at-large pool remains at 34. That is OK, but anything beyond that is too much.

Jim Boeheim has been the biggest proponent of expansion. This is not surprising considering that Syracuse has barely missed the tournament several times in recent history. However, Coach K was against it, but he now has had a change of heart. He does have one interesting idea in his proposal. He suggests that the tournament expand to 96 teams, but both the regular season AND the conference tournament champions get automatic bids. I do agree with him that the regular season champion of the conference should get an automatic bid. It does put more value on the regular season instead of team getting hot at the end of the year, but it still makes the tournament too long.

Some other views on expansion:

• The Sports Business Journal talks about the new television contract and its impact on expansion.
• ESPN talks about how expansion could impact the conference tournaments.
• Kirk Wessler talks about why we don't need to expand.
• The Indianapolis Business Journal talks about the financial impact on the NCAA.
• Gary Parrish says that with the current number of teams, we are not leaving good teams out.
• Alex Farnaroff says "Please, please, please, no."
  
• And the Onion has the unofficial annoucement!!!