Not a Fan of 68

We're only a week away from the first 68-team NCAA Tournament, so it's time for me to tell you my feelings on the new format, especially the "First Four."  As you probably guessed by the title of today's blog, I'm not a fan of 68 teams.  Is 68 better than the 96 they were thinking about this time last year?  Yes.  Is it better than 65?  No.

"If it ain't broke, don't fix it."  Yes, that's a cliche, but the reason cliches become cliches is because they ring true over and over again.  The NCAA Tournament is one of the greatest events in sports.  The tournament expanded to 64 in 1985, then added the play-in game in 2001.  64 is the perfect number.  It divides evenly into six rounds.  Everybody's on equal footing at the start of the tournament.  It's part of why the tournament was so perfect.  It's why the upsets that define the event are able to happen.

When the Mountain West was formed and they needed to add a team, creating the play-in game wasn't a problem with anybody.  The two worst teams play for the right to get smoked by a No. 1 seed.  But the NCAA decided that they wanted to expand the field, so it became inevitable.  Now, if given the choice between 68 and 96, I'm taking 68 in a heartbeat.  96 would be too many.  There simply aren't 96 teams worthy of competing for a National Championship.  (Even in a 64-team field, only about 10-15 schools were capable of winning the whole tournament, but there are 31 conferences and their champions all deserve inclusion.)  Plus, the 32 first-round byes that would be created would give those teams such a tremendous advantage and greatly reduce the possibility of those upsets.

I'm able to make my peace with 68, but I don't like the structure of the new tournament.  The way it's set up now, the lowest four seeds play two games and the winners move on to play No. 1 seeds, and the last four at-large teams (the four teams that wouldn't have gotten into the field last year) play the other two games.  That's what I don't like about the new format.  The "First Four" should be between the eight lowest seeds, and the four winners move on to play the four No. 1 seeds.

I know that the argument against my proposal is that it's unfair to relegate eight smaller conferences to the "play-in" games, but I've got logic on my side here.  Obviously no conference wants to have its champion relegated to the play-in game while the 34 teams that didn't win their conference but still made the tournament didn't have to, but that was true for the 10 years that there was only one play-in game.  And, this just in, all 10 Big East teams that get into the tournament are better than Wofford and UNC Asheville! 

Anyway, time to get back on track.  If the eight lowest seeds play each other for the right to lose to the No. 1 seeds, that means four of them are guaranteed NCAA Tournament wins.  There's no guarantee that happens if they face the Dukes and Ohio States and Kansases of the world in their first tournament game.  Plus, doing it this way makes getting one of the four No. 1 seeds even more of an advantage.  Not only would the No. 1 seeds be playing the four "weakest" teams in the field, they would effectively be given byes while the teams they end up playing would all have a game under their belts. 

If there are only going to be four byes in a tournament, they should go to the four best teams.  Seriously, why do two No. 5 seeds get byes?  That's really the main flaw I see in the "First Four" format.  Giving No. 1 seeds byes makes sense, but giving byes to two random No. 5 seeds seems totally arbitrary.  All 12 teams that will be seeded No. 2, 3 or 4 don't get a bye, but two No. 5 seeds (which go to the 17th-20th best teams in the tournament) do?  I know the counter-argument is that the last four at-large teams wouldn't have been in the tournament last year and that everybody still plays their first game on either Thursday or Friday, so what's the difference?  The difference is that it doesn't seem right to give two No. 5 seeds an advantage over the other two, and that 14 of the 16 teams seeded ahead of them don't get that same advantage.

I also have a slight problem with this whole truTV thing, but that's mainly because I'd never heard of that channel before last year when they announced that it would air tournament games this year.  I'm not even sure I get truTV.  I'm going to have to look for it.  You shouldn't have to check to see if you get the channel that NCAA Tournament games are on.  At least the NCAA was considerate enough to put a little channel guide on the official bracket where you can write in what channel each of the four networks is on.  Come to think of it, maybe I'll just watch the NIT instead.  I know what channel it's on, and I have a feeling those games are going to be better.