A, B, or C ... (Buy or Sell)

[615dawg]

A. The current format of 31 conference champions and the top 34 at-large teams making the NCAA Tournament. 32 teams making the NIT and 16 teams making each of the two CBI/CI.com tournaments. (129 teams in postseason)

B. Expand the NCAA Tournament to 72 teams, expanding the at-large selections to 42 and essentially forcing 8 "play-in" games involving the 16 worst teams (basically 15-18 seeds (think current 13-16) have to play an extra game). Keep the NIT at 32 but do away with the crappy tournaments/

C. Expand the NCAA Tournament to 96 teams. giving the top 32 teams "byes." The at-large field would be up to 66 teams, because you would have to not only guarantee the conference tournament champion a bid, but the regular season champion a bid as well. (e.g. Jackson State wins the SWAC regular season and Valley wins the tournament - both get in).

My choice is B. This does a few things.

Gives the 16 seeds a better chance of winning a postseason game. Jackson State would not beat UConn in a million years, but the right things happen and they could beat Central Connecticut State.
Rewards the top 16 teams in the country by giving them an opponent playing their second game. The top 4 seeds would have an advantage -rewarding them for a season well done.

 

[615dawg]

A. The current format of 31 conference champions and the top 34 at-large teams making the NCAA Tournament. 32 teams making the NIT and 16 teams making each of the two CBI/CI.com tournaments. (129 teams in postseason)

B. Expand the NCAA Tournament to 72 teams, expanding the at-large selections to 42 and essentially forcing 8 "play-in" games involving the 16 worst teams (basically 15-18 seeds (think current 13-16) have to play an extra game). Keep the NIT at 32 but do away with the crappy tournaments/

C. Expand the NCAA Tournament to 96 teams. giving the top 32 teams "byes." The at-large field would be up to 66 teams, because you would have to not only guarantee the conference tournament champion a bid, but the regular season champion a bid as well. (e.g. Jackson State wins the SWAC regular season and Valley wins the tournament - both get in).

My choice is B. This does a few things.

Gives the 16 seeds a better chance of winning a postseason game. Jackson State would not beat UConn in a million years, but the right things happen and they could beat Central Connecticut State.
Rewards the top 16 teams in the country by giving them an opponent playing their second game. The top 4 seeds would have an advantage -rewarding them for a season well done.

 

[8dog]

there are enough mediocre teams in the tournament. No reason to add more.

 

[birdZdawg]

I love the NCAA tourney as it is, but the current "Opening Round" Play-In game leads me to be more open to something like option B. Maybe just having a play in game for each braket could be in the future. </p>

 

[Irondawg]

Why not do something like the NIT the week before the NCAA and have the winner advance to the NCAA field?

Would add more excitement to what is now an afterthought event. You'd have to restrict this to 16 teams to make it work though.

 

[RebelBruiser]

Problem is, you couldn't do an NIT-like tournament the week before the NCAA tourney. I wouldn't have a problem with having more play-in games. It would somewhat weaken the accomplishment of being an NCAA team, but it would mean more games in March Madness, and that can't be a bad thing.

The other idea I like is the idea of making the final two at-large teams be the play-in game. I hate to see a team earn an automatic bid only to lose the play-in game and never really get a shot at the NCAA tourney. I'd much rather see a game between Kentucky and Arizona or something like that, playing for the final at large spot as a 12 seed or something like that.

 

[seshomoru]

Keep the NCAA tourney as is. Make the NIT pool play with 32 teams (Eight pools of four). Round robin in each pool with 1 seeds hosting every game they play, 2 seed hosts against the 3 and 4, etc. Or, you could even host rounds in some smaller, but still fun to go to markets. Best record wins, head to head as the tie break, point differential after that. Move the eight pool winners into a knock out tourney with the eight losers of the NCAA Sweet 16 round. So it's basically like a UEFA Cup.

You get lots of extra games for teams. Plus, you get better teams in the NIT final rounds, which might make it a viable tourney again.

 

[saltybulldog]

Of course the problem there would be weeding out the right "bubble teams".

 

[mstatefan88]

Gotta go A. After about 100 teams, you start getting teams that have no business being in the NCAA or NIT tournaments. 2 years ago we played MVSU in the 1st round of the NIT. If you expand the NCAA Tourney out, that team would have been an NCAA bubble team, and thats just horrible. I like the current format. Teams get left out all the time, its gonna happen because I dont think there is a perfect system. The current one is about as close as you can get. You give high to mid level teams and conference champions playing in the NCAA, with mid to lower teams in the NIT. I think its a good format.

 

[Optimus Prime 4]

confused

 

[tossedoff]

Have a play-in game for each bracket. To make it more interesting, have one of the teams in each play-in game from one of the top 8 RPI conferences. Would make the challenge to the #1 seeds in their first game harder. </p>

 

[Dawg in a pile]

My choice is B. This does a few things.

Gives the 16 seeds a better chance of winning a postseason game. Jackson State would not beat UConn in a million years, but the right things happen and they could beat Central Connecticut State.
Rewards the top 16 teams in the country by giving them an opponent playing their second game. The top 4 seeds would have an advantage -rewarding them for a season well done.

Who cares if Jackson State beats Central Connecticut State when Jackson State probably shouldn't be in the tournament themselves? The reason the 16 seeds are in the tournament is to give the 1 seeds a first round bye. It's kind of nice the way it's set up and in some ways it's messed up, I probably wouldn't mess with it unless I was going to either stop letting all conference tournament winners in, or just lessen the number of teams period to less than 64. So I vote A.

 

[RebelBruiser]

Have a play-in game for each bracket. To make it more interesting, have one of the teams in each play-in game from one of the top 8 RPI conferences. Would make the challenge to the #1 seeds in their first game harder. </p>

That defeats the purpose of seeding. If you make the play-in game for the final at large spot, then the play-in winner would get around a 12 seed and play a 5 seed. The purpose of seeding is to give the No. 1 seeds the easiest first round match up and the easiest road because they earned it by being the best all year.

 

[birdZdawg]

Just play along, OP.

 

[patdog]

You'd add two more days to that first weekend, making it run from Wednesday through Monday. Wednesday and Thursday wouldn't be great basketball, but it'd give the small conference teams a legitimate chance for a win, and then by Friday when the field was down to 64 you'd get a lot better games than you get in the first round now.

 

[wpnetdawg]

down to the final 64 during first weekend of tournament. First weekend would consist of 64 pods of 4 to be played at highest seed.

The old Indiana High School Basketball Tournament was supposed to be incredibly exciting and this scenario would most closely approximate it.

 

[MSUCostanza]

The other 256 idea I heard was to have 16 16-team regions, all at neutral sites played over 3 weekends to get to the Final Four. First and second phases (256 -> 64 and 64 -> 16) would be at 16 sites. The Sweet 16 would be at 4 other neutral sites.

 

[patdog]

Which wouldn't be a terrible thing, but probably wouldn't be feasible to get that many teams to a site on such short notice.

 

[wpnetdawg]

extra layer of play-in games.

If I did this, I would probably seed 1-64 with each of these teams getting a host site. I actually have no problem with allowing automatic qualifiers to host. It would be good for schools like Valley or Belmont to host a pod. It is not like they would win their pod anyway. It would also be a little unfair because a non-top 64 team would get to play at pod with a very weak host while another team might be seeded much higher would host, but have a very difficuly second best team. That part of my plan may not be feasible.

I would group the remaining 192 teams into three unseeded groups. The 65th-128th best teams would make up pool A. The 129th-192nd best teams would make up pool B. The 193rd-256th best teams would make up pool C.

Each pod would consist of a host school and a geographically proximate school from pools A, B, and C. I think to do anything more than this would present a seeding nightmare.

 

[Optimus Prime 4]

the point of the season is to get in the tournament. If everyone (almost) got in, the regular season would suck.

 

[Eureka Dog]

D. Reduce the tourney to 32 teams. REGULAR SEASON conferences champions are auto-qualifiers, unless their RPI > 100. Remaining berth(s) awarded to team(s) in the order of their RPI. I had just rather see teams earn their way into the tourney over the course of a season rather than getting hot for 3/4 games in a conference tourney.

E. Keep the tourney at 64 teams. REGULAR SEASON conferences champions are the initial set auto-qualifiers, unless their RPI > 100. Conference TOURNEY champs are the second set of auto-qualifiers, unless their RPI > 100. Remaining berths go to teams in the order of their RPI.

I think either of these would "force" a D1AA level tourney which is where most of the 14, 15, & 16 seeds in the usual (64-team) NCAA tourney field belong. The SWAC hasn't won an NCAA tourney game in how long? Which would you prefer if you're a SWAC, Ivy League, or Patriot League fan: (1) Winning one D1 NCAA tourney game once every 25 years or (2) Having a legitimate shot at claiming a D1AA title every 5-10 years ?

Also, either of these kills the Selection Sunday "stuff", but only the networks will cry about that.
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[Dawg in a pile]

D. Reduce the tourney to 32 teams. REGULAR SEASON conferences champions are auto-qualifiers, unless their RPI > 100. Remaining berth(s) awarded to team(s) in the order of their RPI. I had just rather see teams earn their way into the tourney over the course of a season rather than getting hot for 3/4 games in a conference tourney.

E. Keep the tourney at 64 teams. REGULAR SEASON conferences champions are the initial set auto-qualifiers, unless their RPI > 100. Conference TOURNEY champs are the second set of auto-qualifiers, unless their RPI > 100. Remaining berths go to teams in the order of their RPI.

I think either of these would "force" a D1AA level tourney which is where most of the 14, 15, & 16 seeds in the usual (64-team) NCAA tourney field belong. The SWAC hasn't won an NCAA tourney game in how long? Which would you prefer if you're a SWAC, Ivy League, or Patriot League fan: (1) Winning one D1 NCAA tourney game once every 25 years or (2) Having a legitimate shot at claiming a D1AA title every 5-10 years ?

Also, either of these kills the Selection Sunday "stuff", but only the networks will cry about that.
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Ok, I change my vote to D or E. Either would be better in my opinion but I don't like the RPI being the determining factor because alot of that has to do with scheduling and you can't be sure how good some teams on your schedule will be at the time that you schedule them. Maybe it's the only fair way though, I don't know. Less would be better though, 64 is either just right or too many. I don't know what would be accomplished by adding more undeserving teams to a tournament that already has at least several undeserving teams.

 

[wpnetdawg]

as it is except for division titles, conference titles, positioning. Any team that has a viable chance of winning the tourney will make the field with ease.

In this format, teams would still have the opportunity to play to host a pod which would be incredibly valuable due to the two extra home games and the opportunity to advance to the main field.

 

[jbulldog]

and let them play. Some of these first round games are absolute jokes.

 

[MSU CS 2004]

Farkin' A.

If it ain't broke, don't fix it. I love the NCAA Tournament. More mediocre teams would only dilute the tournament. It's just fine the way it is.

And to hell with that conference champions must be in the Top 100 crap. You win your conference: you go. You don't: pray the committee selects you. Everyone controls their own destiny, from UK to Memphis to Kennesaw State.