(04-02-2010 07:40 AM)outsideualr Wrote: 96 teams in NCAA tournament great idea, but only if regular season champs and tournament champs get automatic bids, and leagues have a cap on the number of teams participating. Worst case scenario if all the automatic spots were filled, would still leave 33 at large berths. Wally also felt that if all midlevel conferences don't have enough teams qualify, the NCAA could allow more from a league that is capped out.
I know some of you like the status quo, but personally I think this is a great way of making the tournament even better, and have espoused the exact same scenario is previous posts. God that's scary. Wally and I are on the same wave length. Anyway, right now, only 19% of the D1 teams make the NCAA tournament, and with the NIT, a total of only 28%. I would go further and eliminate the NIT, as Coach K has suggested, since it loses money each year. With 96 teams in the NCAA, there would be no need for the NIT.
I'm sure the NCAA will probably not follow all these guidelines, and will do something to further screw the little guys, but maybe there's some hope. 
Ya, I can't wait for this:
And yet the NCAA doesn't like the term "watered-down" to describe a potential expanded field.
Perhaps "diluted" is more palatable?
Why on earth would a league like the Big East even bother to put its teams through the bloodbath known as the Big East tournament if it were going to get 13 of its teams into the Big Dance? (That's the number that bracketologist Joe Lunardi projected the league would've gotten had the 96-team field been in place this season.)
From ESPN-
Essentially, this is what we learned from NCAA head honchos here Thursday afternoon:
• They don't care about fans.
• They don't care about the regular season.
• They don't care about conference tournaments.
• And they sure don't care about student-athletes' being bothered by that pesky "student" portion of their hyphenated moniker by going to class.
What do they care about? Cash.
I think they haven't considered how this will effect attendance. I can't see paying big money to travel to the first and second rounds, like I have done many times before, to see games between teams ranked in the 40's against teams ranked in the 90's. Half the high seeds (1-32) will be playing their first game on Sunday and their second game on a Wednesday. How many fans can take basically a week off of work on short notice? Then 2 or 3 days later they will be playing their next game in a different city. The proposed set-up is certainly not "fan friendly", especially for the top 32 seeds. It was also pointed out that in the new set-up Northern Iowa's game with Kansas would have been it's third in 6 days- which just makes upsets less likely.
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Wally right on in his column this morning, IMO.
