This website sez so.... http://www.sportsbybrooks.com/source-mar...deal-27742

Personally I think going to 68 or 72 might be better but TV rules this call.

I hope not. There are too many unworthy teams in the tourney already. I guess the mentality that created the 'no child left behind' standard strikes again. Let's all celebrate mediocrity, and let the unworthy have a chance...

Why not just set things up so that all 120 schools that play BCS level football are Division 1? Then all 120 schools can play for the Division 1 national championship, and we'll just forget the regular season. We can just let everyone in the playoffs then, and have a double elimination playoff that takes up the entire season...

I'm sure this post will p!ss off those who attend, or root for schools that don't play football at the highest level, since they'll probably be unable to see the sarcasm...

I think its freaking stupid...

Why not? The college basketball regular season is practically meaningless anyway. The general public really doesn't care until March. May as well make March Madness even more of an event.

Huge mistake, in my opinion. Why water down the field? I say add 3 more play-in games, so there's a play in at each region.

I agree wvucrazed... I can almost deal w/ 3 more play in games... I prefer to cutting the field some, more than adding more teams.

I like the idea of expansion, but I don't think there are enough good teams to bump it up 30 teams. If all conference champs are invited and about 10 others that usually make up the bubble teams go it'd be alright.

I'd prefer to see them go back to 48 teams, frankly. Every sport has so watered down the post season, it's becoming meaningless...

I would be for expanding to 72 requiring the bottom 16 conferences to participate in a play-in game. Those conferences almost never win a game in the NCAA's under normal circumstances.

That would then allow for 8 more at-large bids and if you look at the stats historically there are usually anywhere from another 5-10 teams that deserve to be in. After that its a sharp, sharp drop off.

96 is really going to dillute the field and the money payable per NCAA unit.

I like the idea of more play-in games if it allows more conferences to pick up a second payable unit. That would be a better distribution of the wealth than to water down every conference's share with 96 teams.

8 more at large bids means 8 more teams that have no business in the post season. I'm not in favor of elevating mediocrity. I never will be...

No this stinks. It will make the NIT meaningless. Now you gan see a few good matchups in the NIT. To put all these teams in the NCAA's would mean why bother playing the regular season. The BE gets 15 bids each year. the ACC gets 10 etc. etc.

Awful, awful, awful, awful, awful idea. This will destroy what little value the regular season has as of today. At least the last 3 or 4 weeks of the regular season have meaning with all of the bubble teams and making the NCAA Tournament itself is still somewhat of an achievement. A 96-team NCAA Tournament is an "Everyone gets a trophy!" type of move that kills months of work for an extra couple of nights of tourney games. Just awful.

The Onion had this first:

I love good sarcasm, and that was a riot...

(02-01-2010 03:21 PM)frogman Wrote:  No this stinks. It will make the NIT meaningless. Now you gan see a few good matchups in the NIT. To put all these teams in the NCAA's would mean why bother playing the regular season. The BE gets 15 bids each year. the ACC gets 10 etc. etc.

That assumes the NIT would even remain an active tournament. The NCAA owns the NIT and would probably dissolve the postseason version of the tournament and keep the tip-off tournament.

I like the CBS-Turner option myself. Don't like the idea that the cable partner could get the final every other year. Could see the following

Play-in round: CBS College Sports and TNT/TBS (depends on which network Turner throws these games on, could be both).

Round of 64 & 32: CBS, CBS College and TNT/TBS

Round of 16: CBS and TNT/TBS

Round of 8, Final Four and Championship: CBS

Would not stun me to see something like a draft of sorts that allow TNT to get some games ahead of CBS (really more like a draft of sites since they probably wouldn't have TNT or CBS a single game from one site). I don't want it on ESPN and think FOX would be a disaster unless it included F/X and at least one other network not named FSN (like Versus).

Speaking of Versus, apparently NBC has no interest in this and they actually have the channel bandwidth to do this with NBC, USA, Versus (when they come into the NBC) and a 4th channel (MSNBC, CNBC, Telemundo, wherever else they are carrying the Olympics).

(02-01-2010 03:42 PM)zibby Wrote:  The Onion had this first:

That's total BS that Oxnard Truck Driving School got left out.

This is just an incredibly stupid idea...folks running the ncaa just want to kill the golden goose? + with conference tourneys, every team has a shot to make it into the tourney going into the last week-end of the season... now i can understand going to 68 teams with some more play in games but that's enough...and another thing these morons running the ncaa ***** about any concept of a football playoff like using the excuse for missing classwork and all to veto such a plan but now want to extend the bball tourney another week?

Ridiculous. It should be harder not easier to make the tournament.

I agree, too many teams making it in just about every sport. Baseball plays more than 150 games and then lets more than 1/4 the league in, the NFL and NBA seem to let half the league in and the NFL isn't much better. The only sport that's an exception is college football which from a strictly merit competitive perspective should probably have about 4-6 teams in a tournament (even if I personally don't want to see a playoff there for other reasons).

I don't think too many teams make it now. I think it's very close to being perfect. If anything, there are usually 2 or 3 deserving teams - sometimes a few more - kept out. I think adding 3, with play-ins at each regional, makes alot of sense. Expanding it beyond that would seriously dilute the product, and take away the made race for making the NCAA tournament. Basically if you are in a power conference and you have a winning record overall, you're in - meaning that your non-league schedule would be nothing but home games against cupcakes. It would suck for the overall season.

It seems like most fans don't like this, but I doubt that becomes relevant. If they feel they can make more $$$ with additional NCAA tourney games at the close of the season, it will probably happen.

I'm in favor of the number sticking, or no more than 3 bid added. 96 just adds 31 unneeded teams.