(01-16-2024 03:07 PM)4x4hokies Wrote: I have long thought that you could improve the quality of the tournament by encouraging conferences to grow. It could even help with geography and overhead.
(01-16-2024 04:55 PM)inutech Wrote: What if we limited auto-bids to conferences with 10 or fewer members?
I like that idea more. What if every conference had to trim down? How might that improve college sports?
I think us realignment nerds are focused on having nice symmetrical boxes on a grid. Human brains by nature, crave order and dislike chaos.
Back 20 years ago, it was "everyone's going to 12!" and people posted plans for 28 DI conferences with 12 teams each. But it wasn't in everyone's self interest to group themselves like that.
(best example: The Ivy ain't adding members. If faced with "you need to have 16 to have an auto-bid" they'd cut a deal for "Ivy vs Patriot for one bid."
If you root for a big school, you're highly interested in trimming things down so the entire college sports landscape is 6 conferences of 16 and no one else matters.
If you root for a non-P5 major conference team, you're looking for how you can get to a higher level.
If you're a small school, you just don't want to be left outside the big time.
The real answer on how to make college sports better isn't via NUMBERS and rules to dictate the size of conferences. It's merely having a far lesser disparity. More total conferences playing at a high level. Which doesn't require rule changes, but revenue sharing. Which the big boys will never go for.
College basketball isn't WORSE NOW than it used to be because the Big Ten and SEC have 14-16 members.... it's worse because fewer conferences have good teams in them. The best 75 or so programs in college basketball were spread out over 20 conferences, and now it's like 12.
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What if Conferences Had to Have At Least 16 Members to Get an NCAA Hoops Auto-Bid?
