The NCAA is closing in on making a very bad decision in expanding the NCAA Tournament.
The NCAA has been tiptoeing the line of "too much" for the past couple of years. On Tuesday, they may have crossed it.
ESPN's Pete Thamel reported on Tuesday that the NCAA is closing in on a decision to expand both the Men's and Women's tournaments from 68 teams to 76 teams, and the change will go into effect immediately, starting in 2027.
We have been approaching the decision that would officially be "too much" for college sports, and this might be it. The NCAA decided two years ago to expand the College Football Playoffs from 4 to twelve teams, and the talks on the gridiron are that the tournament might see another expansion in just a few years.
The NCAA basketball tournament has been just about perfect for all of time. Then, in 2011, they expanded the tournament from 64 to 68 teams and started the best tournament in sports a couple of days earlier.
The play-in never really made sense because it was two 16-seed games and two 11-seed games. However, people loved it, and the "First Four" became just as popular as all of the other rounds of the tournament.
For 15 years, the NCAA has been living in the sweet spot until only recently. This hasn't been a brewing idea. Rather, this was a random idea that popped up fairly out of nowhere.
As this tournament now aims to expand from 68 teams to 76 teams, the First Four games are now null and void. The Play-In games will become a round unto themselves that will feature 12 games to finalize the large bracket.
According to the reports, the games will feature all 16 seed games, two 15 and 12 seed games, and all four 11 seeds.
Again, this feels random to some extent. The only matchup that makes sense in my opinion is the four 16 seeds, so that they have a chance to win a game in the tournament. Everyone else just doesn't make much sense at all.
This change is one that literally no one was asking for, and yet we are getting anyway.
The 2027 March Madness Tournament will have 76 teams in it instead of 68. What is going to stop them from moving forward? What keeps this committee from expanding this to 80 teams? How about 96 teams? Dare I say 100 teams?
Hogs get fed, pigs get slaughtered and we are beginning to approach the latter.
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