Almost everyone has their favorite bracket story: The disinterested employee who’s handed a blank bracket, fills it out in a few minutes on their lunch break and wins the whole pool. The little kid who chooses winners based on the nicknames he likes the most. My wife, who is a firm non-sports fan, once filled out her NCAA Tournament bracket according to places she’d like to live, and because she’s from Michigan and that was the year the Wolverines made their improbable run to the final, drinks were on her.
Those stories are everywhere come March. They also add up to being very lucrative for the NCAA and its television partners. The NCAA men’s basketball (and increasingly women’s basketball) Tournament is a cash cow because it transcends normal sports interests. The average American, not just the average sports fan, fills out a bracket and follows along.
And one of the main reasons is it’s so easy: For so long the field was 64 teams, making for a clean bracket to fill out and understand, from start to finish. When it was expanded to 68, that was a bit unwieldy but those “First Four” or whatever-they’re-calling-them games finish before Thursday anyway. That didn’t really change the bracket process.
Ah, but here we go again. At various times the NCAA and the people who run it have talked about messing with perfection. And this is where Greg Sankey, so right on college football expansion, is so wrong.
Sankey is one of the architects of the 12-team College Football Playoff model, which will be so good for the sport. College football has been increasingly dominated by a few programs, almost all in the Deep South. Expanding the field to 12 will involve every region of the country, with six conferences guaranteed a spot and keep more fan bases engaged as the season goes on. The more fans who follow a team who have a chance, the better for the sport. And the bigger the field, the more football, which is also a good thing.
Ochai Agbaji (30) celebrates Kansas’ win against North Carolina in the NCAA Tournament championship game in April. (Bob Donnan / USA Today)
There are still issues to sort out on the margins. But 12 seems like a perfect number. It keeps the regular season important — not as important as right now, but still important — while also increasing interest around the country. You can even fill out a bracket.
That brings us to where Sankey is so wrong.
The beauty of the NCAA basketball tournament is in its simplicity. Two rounds the first weekend. Two rounds the next weekend. Then the Final Four. (Again, never mind the pesky four games to whittle the field from 68 to 64. We’d rather those didn’t exist, but whatever, get them done by noon Thursday and it’s no problem.)
But expanding the field would clog things up. The beauty of the current process, which has offices around the country talking college basketball for those weeks in March, would be disrupted. Maybe Sankey and others pushing expansion have a plan to keep it simple. But how? A 96-team field where the first 32 have byes, and the other 64 play first-round games Tuesday and Wednesday? Or make those games Thursday and Friday, and push later-round games to Monday and Tuesday?
My mind already hurts.
Maybe a half-measure where you expand to 80? But those games still have to be held sometime that first week, and inevitably that disrupts the rhythm of what’s a perfect setup for fans and television. Two first two rounds the first week, the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight the next week … it’s perfect the way it is.
But why the need to even consider expanding? Sankey and other proponents point to how the number of teams playing has grown: more than 340 teams now.
“The division has grown over time, the number of members, the quality of basketball, the commitment, the expectations that are upon any number of programs nationally,” Sankey said this week at the SEC’s basketball media days. “So why don’t we facilitate those opportunities?”
Then Sankey brought up one of his own teams last year as an example.
“It was informed by the fact that I think (Texas) A&M was playing as well as anyone in men’s basketball last March and didn’t have access,” he said.
Well, the Aggies did have access. They could have won the SEC tournament and earned its automatic bid. They could have not lost eight games in a row during the meat of their SEC season. As impressive as it was for the
That’s what football expansion gets right: The margin for error in the regular season is still going to be low. Only nine percent of the teams in FBS will make the Playoff. Even if you just count Power 5 programs, reserving one spot for the Group of 5, only 16 percent of the power conference teams will make the 12-team field.
In basketball, meanwhile, 20 percent of all Division I teams make the 68-team field. And if you want to say 20 automatic bids go to lower-tier teams, that still leaves plenty of room for the SEC to get six teams in, as it did last year, along with the Big 12 and Big East.
There’s no great crime in the seventh-best team from a conference not making the NCAA Tournament. Not after you had more than 30 chances to show your wares in the regular season and conference tournament. Expansion in basketball seeks to solve a nonexistent problem.
Football playoff expansion was a visionary move by Sankey, whose conference was dominating the current system, but he realized it was for the greater good of the sport. And everyone’s pocketbooks, of course. But it legitimately is good for the future of the sport.
Basketball tournament expansion would be the opposite. Maybe it would get a few more dollars in the television contract, but in the long run, it would threaten to dilute interest in a marquee event.
It’s not necessary. It shouldn’t happen.
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