Beer, Babes, and Sports

CBB: NCAA set to F**K up March Madness Tournament and make it a 96-teams field???

Posted: February 6th, 2010 | Author: Zim | Filed under: NCAAB, NCAAF, Top 25 | No Comments »


Forget about Cinderella teams like George Mason back in 2006 making a run even past the first few rounds of a 96-teams tournament.

  • How to ruin a good thing, expansion of the tournament absolutely un-necessary…
  • Greedy NCAA trying to wring every last penny out of the NCAA tournament, near to making a HUGE mistake by expanding March Madness from 65-to-96 teams…
  • One way to make sure your cash cows are still in the tournament deep into the action is to ensure they get there by making it tougher on the mid-majors and little guys…
  • If the NCAA can get away with this, how the hell are they not able to give us a big time college football play-off??

by Mike Zimmer, Bracketologist

According to various reports, the NCAA is considering expanding the basketball tournament from 65-teams to a whopping 96-teams in an effort to wring every last penny out of a system that at this point in almost every one’s mind doesn’t necessarily need tweaking.

One report says, it’s almost a certainty that this could go forward (http://www.sportsbybrooks.com/source-march-madness-with-96-teams-done-deal-27742)

When the NCAA expanded from 48-to-64 teams back in the 1980′s it was a sign of the times and progress that needed to be done with so many teams entering Division I status.  It also exponentially made the March Madness tournament such a bigger even than it already was.  However, adding more teams is absolutely dumbing it down to a point where it’s absolutely un-necessary…that is, unless you are a greedy, money grubbing college athletics administrator.

The NCAA, run by all sorts of “chairs” from all over the college landscape include athletic directors, college presidents and other “administrators” that come up with all the rules and sometimes assinine decisions when it concerns our college sports we enjoy.  Saddled with the debt of all sorts of sports that don’t make money (aka women’s sports under Title IX, track and field, or anything else no one cares about) these administrators are trying to find a way to expand their money making opportunities.  This time, by instead of making a HUGE amount of money on a college football play-off, by messing with something that doesn’t need fixed.  Plus, why make the regular season all that much more less meaningful???

Expanding the field by 31-teams is basically absorbing the NIT.  Which, to my estimation is just stupid.  There are typically only about 5 or 6-teams each season that have a legitimate beef with perhaps not getting selected to the NCAA tournament.  The rest, well, they didn’t win their conference tournaments, weren’t considered worthy enough by the silly selection committee as an “at-large” team and don’t need to be in the tournament.  That is what the NIT and the other post-season tournament that popped up is for.  With the agreement between the NIT and the NCAA expiring here soon, the NCAA has decided they’ve found a way to make more money.

By adding teams and games, that means more TV revenue.  They know the networks will eat that shit up, especially if they invite TBS, TNT, ESPN, VS. or any number of networks to hop on board to televise games.  They know that even small colleges bring in ratings for basketball.  By adding teams and games to the tournament, the NCAA can then charge US more money for tickets and tournament TV packages that might then be designed later to watch the “extended” tournament.

One other hidden agenda?  In my opinion, this is about keeping the cash cows in the tournament and removing the little guys that don’t make money.

If you expand the tournament to 96-teams, that will make for HUGE brackets.  One way to do this is to split the tournament into two 48-team brackets instead of 32-teams.  How do you do that?  Well, teams with higher seeds would get a first round bye like they used to do when the entire tourney was 48-teams.

This is a way to ensure that even the middle of the road #8 or #9 seeds from the Big Ten, ACC or other big conferences would get a leg up.  They know they’ll get more money (ie more butts in seats, more eyeballs on TV’s = more dollars they can charge) for an (18-12) N.C. State team or a (19-13) Minnesota team than they would for a (26-4) Charleston Southern team now don’t they?

What this would mean is, the Cinderella stories and the runs in the tournament by Cinderella teams would more or less be absolute freaks of nature and nearly impossible.  It would ensure that the bigger teams got better seeds, and the cash cows like North Carolina, Duke, Michigan State, UCLA, Kansas and Syracuse’s of the world stuck around a lot longer and were there to the absolute end every year.

After all, if you make a team like a George Mason, a #13 seed play a game against an equally small mid-major prior to their date with #4 seed, the probability of them pulling off an upset in the next round is more and more unlikely.  In other words, you wouldn’t get runs like George Mason made to the Final Four a few years back.  That, after all, was bad for TV ratings, George Mason has a small enrollment and don’t travel well.

But the biggest thing that makes this whole idea stink is that if they can expand the NCAA basketball tournament out to 96-teams, how in the hell can they not give us a damn 16-or-8-or-4-team college football play-off???  The answer is money and greed.

All those same people that are trying to make this decision for the basketball tournament see dollars going straight to the NCAA.  For football, well, all the kick-backs from the bowls, corporate sponsors, vacations to Miami, New Orleans, Pasadena et al would be broken up now wouldn’t it.  It would be harder to hide the big money from the schools that would come rolling in from all the sponsors trying to make a buck on the operation now wouldn’t it? 

It’s absolutely hypocritical that the NCAA would wring one cash cow they know they can get every red cent from while not tapping another, mostly because they would create a monster that they would then have to share the pie with.  It would also blow a big old hole in their bull crap scam too, with teams like Texas, Ohio State, USC and Florida making potentially Billions for the NCAA and her partners when it came to football, not to mention blow up their silly and ridiculous Title IX bull shit.

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