The idea of expanding the NCAA Tournament from 65 teams to something larger has been floated for a few years, usually eliciting the same combination of anger, trepidation and disbelief in me. Anger because messing with a tournament that is the rare sports event embraced even by non-sports fans is a mistake. Trepidation because I’m worried about what it means for my alma mater, Creighton. And disbelief because, well, I just never believed the NCAA would be dumb enough to tinker with it.
A report yesterday indicates that the NCAA is indeed dumb enough to tinker with it, and may very well be in the process of doing so right now. Faced with the idea that expansion is probably coming, I wanted to take a closer look to see if this really is such a terrible idea, particularly for schools like Creighton.
The NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament is the most exclusive postseason in major American sport; just 18% of teams are invited (65 out of 347). By comparison, here’s some other NCAA Tournament numbers:
68 of 120 FBS (Formerly D1) teams make bowl games (57%)
64 of 211 D1 baseball teams make the tournament (30%)
48 of 198 D1 men’s soccer teams make the tournament (24%)
As for the pros, here’s how the playoffs in the four major sports break down:
16 of 30 NBA teams make the playoffs (54%)
16 of 30 NHL teams make the playoffs (54%)
12 of 32 NFL teams make the playoffs (37.5%)
8 of 30 MLB teams make the playoffs (27%)
So at 18%, the Men’s Hoops tourney is an exclusive country club by comparison. Maybe expansion isn’t such a bad idea after all. Going to 96 teams puts the percentage at 27%, which is still a low number compared to other sports (surprisingly to me) but still exclusive enough that it doesn’t render the regular season meaningless.
My fears about the number being too big allayed, next I wondered about whether the Selection Committee would merely use the added spots to further screw the mid-majors. I don’t have a heckuva lot of faith in the people in that room to do the right thing when it comes to mid-majors, so would going to 96 teams merely give them more room for mediocre-to-terrible major teams, or would it mean more spots for solid mid-majors to move off the bubble?
There are 73 teams in the “BCS” leagues (10 in the Pac-10, 11 in the Big Ten, 12 each in the Big XII, ACC and SEC, and 16 in the Big East.) For the sake of argument, lets say all but the bottom two teams make it from each league. That eliminates 12 teams from the at-large field, leaving us with 61 teams. Add the 25 auto-qualifiers (31 minus six from the BCS leagues, which we already counted) and that’s only 86 teams…
Leaving ten spots for mid-major at large bids. That’s several more than mids have received in recent years, and that’s assuming all but the bottom two from every BCS league makes it. I’d bet more than that will be left out, because teams with 12 or 13 wins can’t be defended even by Digger Phelps, though I bet he’ll try.
From another angle, if you assume the 32 team NIT field will simply be rolled into the NCAA Tournament to comprise the 96 team field…only 14 of the 32 bids in last year’s NIT went to BCS teams. That’s a whopping 18 mid-and-low-major teams who wouldn’t have been in the NCAA Tournament otherwise.
Will the Selection Committee attempt to disadvantage the mid-majors through tough matchups, etc.? Sure. But they won’t be able to keep the “bubble” mid-majors out anymore and still put on a credible tournament. Those bubble teams will now have a chance to prove their mettle on the court. And that’s a massive, massive improvement.
Specifically for the Missouri Valley, it may become a four or five bid league in good years. That’s not crazy talk; add the three NIT bids the league usually gets to the two NCAA bids it gets in good years, and you’ve got half the league playing in the Big Dance. That helps the stature of the league, it helps recruiting, and it brings in more money, since more teams in the tournament means more slices of the pie.
In 2006 and 2009, the two recent seasons where Creighton found itself on the wrong side of the bubble, the Jays would have been dancing. After breaking down the numbers and realizing they’re not as scary as I first thought, and realizing that two good Jays teams of the last decade would have earned a bid, I’d come to the conclusion that expansion of the tournament is good idea.
What do you think?