(10-01-2019 07:08 PM)Wedge Wrote: Because of the barriers the NCAA put up to discourage new D-I conferences from forming and demanding March Madness autobids, every existing conference that holds an autobid is a valuable commodity.
Even if a conference blew up, the schools that didn't have a better option right away would keep it going somehow, to make sure they are in a conference with an autobid. The WAC is an obvious example of that.
You're right. NCAAT autobids, coupled with what amounts to an open admission policy in D-I, are the cause of a lot of conference alignment problems. If any school with a pulse and a desire to glom onto NCAAT loot can enter, but no new conferences can form, we are bound to get the unwieldy nightmares we see today and no good way to fix the problem.
The six power conferences in basketball are never going to give up seats in the tournament field. And, IMO, they shouldn't have to. They are the backbone of the tournament. In the past I have laid out a tournament structure that I believe would solve this dilemma.
My proposal was to expand the tournament field from 68 teams with four playin games to 112 teams. 48 schools from the P6 would get double byes, and 64 schools (including all other conference champions) would play two rounds in Week 1 with the 16 winners advancing to the third round. Those 16, plus the 48 P6 teams would be reseeded after round two.
In this scenario, it doesn't much matter if the number of conferences increases. Having more autobids during the first round isn't going to have much impact on which 16 teams advance to the third round. Very large conferences like CUSA and the A10 could realign into smaller, more geopgraphically logical leagues without affecting which 64 schools get invites to Round 1.
All that's really needed to make something like this happen is to figure out a way to eqitably distribute the tournament prize pool. There's more than enough money to go around to make that work.