96 Team Tournament

We're still about a month away from March Madness, but recently the subject of tournament expansion has been entering the sports media. As long as I've been watching the NCAA tournament, it's been a 64/65 team (however you choose to look at the play-in game) event, I wasn't born the last time the tournament really expanded. I certainly don't support adding 32 teams to the tournament.

To me, there's a pride in being selected to play in March Madness. There's a fairly even split between at large bids and automatic qualifiers for conference champions. Basketball certainly does a better job finding a true champion that football does. There's some special to be felt when you get invited. There are 347 NCAA Division 1 basketball programs. 65 make the tournament. That's only 18-19% of schools whose records and resumes deem them worthy of a shot. Add 31 teams to 96 and that rises to almost 28%. That's over a quarter of all teams getting a chance at the national, some who are certainly not worthy. Then, add in 32 more teams for the NIT and 16 apiece for the newer lower level tournaments and you're looking at 160 schools playing "postseason" basketball, even though three of those tournaments don't mean anything. That's 46%. Almost half.

Now, what would be the purpose of this? I'll spare you the obvious reason of money, because that's number one on the list and nobody would dispute that. Number two, I think it's because of how big time schools, for example North Carolina this year, have some down time. Right now, nobody would put UNC into the 65 team tournament. They've horribly underachieved. The selection committee would have to justify their inclusion big time if they add them this year. What if there's a 96 team tournament? A team like UNC can get in on history alone, no matter how bad their record is like this year. If UNC turns in, say a 16 loss season, the selection committee could include them for no other reason than saying "Oh, well, there's 96 spots, we just had to fill 'em."

So what do you think? Is tournament expansion a good or bad idea in your eyes? Maybe there's a compromise to be found between 65 and 96?