More NCAA Tournament teams for the sake of more teams is nonsense. It only makes for more frivolous games when sports fans crave and deserve meaningful competition.
More isn’t always better. Sometimes it’s just more. Unless more can somehow be less.
If the NCAA, in all its finite wisdom, expands the men’s basketball tournament to 72 or 76 teams, less is exactly what everyone gets. Except, of course, for a few bank accounts.
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The tournament is supposed to be foremost about basketball, watching the best teams, and a way to enjoy March. The tournament is also about how much money the tournament can produce, which is a proper aim in a capitalistic economy.
Expansion, though, will give us more games but a lower standard of what it means to play in March. Only the NCAA could defend this math in the name of what’s best for student-athletes. More would indeed be less.
Veteran columnist Jeff Gilbert writes Ohio State basketball and OHSAA sports for Press Pros Magazine.com.
The intersection of basketball and money is complex. Let’s start with the basketball part (and save the financial part for later) because that’s what us tax-paying middle-classers care about when the money being spent has more than one comma in it.
Again, adding teams to the bracket will not enhance the product. More teams equal worse because it lowers the standard of what it means to make the NCAA Tournament. March Madness is supposed to be a reward.
Why do we (and by we, I don’t mean you and me, I mean society’s so-called elite minds) continually meet in boardrooms, sit around beautiful and expensive conference tables in soft chairs, and talk ourselves into this nonsense. The worse the idea the more ridiculous the groupthink.
Ohio State barely missed the NCAA Tournament last year with a 17-15 record. At 18-14 they might have made it. Shouldn’t the Buckeyes have to play better basketball and win at least 18 games to make the tournament next year? But if expansion happens, 17-15 and 16-16 teams will hear their names called on Selection Sunday.
What’s select about being the 69th through the 72nd or 76th team? You might say what’s select about being the 65th through 68th team. Fair point.
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When the tournament expanded from 48 to 64 we questioned that. But, I will admit, time has been kind to that number. That’s the number (there’s 68 teams but 64 lines on the bracket) we’re used to. It makes bracket pools more fun, trying to choose the 12-5 or the 13-4 upset. The First Four, outside of the appreciative crowds at UD Arena, gets little attention. The games are on TruTV. If you have that channel, you might not realize it. Another version or two of First Fours at other sites won’t attract more TV viewers.
Coaches keep and lose jobs based on NCAA appearances. For coaches whose programs are regular bubble teams, this is good news. But all it does is lower the standard of what is deemed a successful season.
The tournament has already become less competitive because the transfer portal and NIL dollars torpedoed the mid-majors. We’ll see the 17-year cicadas more often than we see a mid-major in the Final Four.
Lower standards infect sports at all levels. For a while I came around to the expanded Major League Baseball playoffs. I embraced the line that more teams meant more exciting playoff races and more fans being interested in September.
But I’m losing interest. If the Reds make it as the third wild-card team, what does that mean? It certainly doesn’t mean they’re good. All it means is they won’t last long in the playoffs and the corporate side of the Reds can say, “See, we gave you a winner.”
No, just a lower standard of what it means to win. And ready-made excuses.
The Ohio High School Athletic Association did the same thing by expanding some sports from four to seven divisions and some from three to five with more expansion coming in other sports. More people get medals and trophies. But is the competition from the first round to the state final better?
The OHSAA made a good call in reducing the regional football number from 16 teams to 12…still should be 8!
The OHSAA made a good call to reduce the football regionals from 16 to 12 teams. Still should be eight.
I received an email this week from the National Federation of State High School Associations, commonly known as the NFHS, dripping with feel-goodism. The NFHS has a new strategic plan. One of the priorities is “Protect the Purpose.” And what would that purpose be?
Karissa Niehoff, the CEO of the NFHS, says “unlike all other levels of sport in our nation, the No. 1 goal of high school sports is not winning games but helping students learn valuable lessons that prepare them for successful careers and lives.”
I 100% agree that sports teach valuable life lessons when coached by men and women who care about the athletes more than themselves. When I coached, those things mattered to me. But this kind of happy messaging is very much about de-emphasizing winning.
A growing number of sports administrators want to be consensus builders and make everyone feel better, feel included, feel like winners. Too many administrators have exchanged what it means to truly excel for idealistic placebos.
Will the coach who gets into the NCAAs as the No. 72 or No. 76 team feel better about his program? Should he? I doubt it. Coaches are competitive and want what’s deserved, not given. Now that’s a good life lesson.
The financial gains of this proposed expansion, which SEC commissioner Greg Sankey spoke favorably about this week, will help TV partners CBS and TNT. Contractually, the addition of teams would not cost them more in rights fees. And if the women’s tournament were to expand, it would be at no additional cost to ESPN.
When the ads come on explaining how this group is about enhancing the competitive experience of student athletes, think of CBS and TNT…and turn your TV off.
The contract is unique and favors the networks. The NCAA gave broadcast rights and official sponsorships to the TV partners when they signed the current deal in 2010. That deal runs through 2032. The sponsorship money covers some of the $1 billion they annually pay the NCAA. Those sponsors are Capital One, AT&T and others like them.
The Wall Street Journal reported that for expansion to make TV sense, the NCAA will have to allow networks to enlist sponsors who sell alcohol. The NCAA has shied away from that type of sponsorship.
While other cities that would get additional games could make money, the by far biggest beneficiary of an expanded tournament would be TV. Whoever first said sports are all about TV, was right. Of course, we’ve known that for decades.
We all, especially if you who have read this far, watch on big flat screens we bought precisely for watching sports. But we’re not part of the problem. We just want to watch great competition between teams that deserve to be there. We want high standards, legitimate contenders and as many competitive games as possible.
We want teams in the Big Dance who can bust a move.
We don’t want more wallflowers who can’t bust a bracket.
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