80 teams in the NCAA Tournament in this Decade?
And I don’t think it’s just a ploy to get Mizzou in. How would 80 teams work, you ask?
80 - 64 = 16 extra teams.
There are four brackets, so I would assume there would be 4 new teams per bracket, the 17th, 18th, 19th and 20th seeds. I don’t think it would be at all fair to have these guys battle it out in two games each to make the actual tourney, so I’m guessing that they would do battle with the 16, 15, 14 and 13 seeds respectively for the honor of getting to play one of the top 4 seeds in what used to be the first round.
They might play all of the games at one location, effectively adding four new first round locations.
I’m all for more excitement, but this just seems a little paunchy to me.
Anybody else have any thoughts? Am I putting this thing together wrong?
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4 Responses to “80 teams in the NCAA Tournament in this Decade?”
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May 19th, 2006 at 10:25 am
I agree with you. I think 80 teams is far too many. I’d hate to see the NCAA basketball tournament go the way of the bowl games, where a .500 record gets you into the postseason. The tournament is already plenty exciting, and I hope it stays where it is.
May 19th, 2006 at 1:07 pm
The medicore power conference teams that apparently live in mortal fear of missing the NCAA tournament should not be allowed both to restrict the number of teams playing in each conference tournament and increase the number of teams playing in the NCAA tournament.
May 19th, 2006 at 1:12 pm
We couldn’t be talking about the Big East here could we?
If it had a few more teams, I know I’d like it more.
Indeed, I might start calling it the Little East until those guys start listening to reason and expanding more. I mean, Gonzaga would be a perfect fit for the Big East.
May 21st, 2006 at 11:38 am
Gregg Doyel wrote a good article about this awhile ago… the teams that this would benefit are those with mediocre seasons and whiny coaches, like Gary Williams, Jim Boeheim, Bo Ryan, etc. Why choose between a 19-12 Maryland team and a 20-13 Miami team when you can have them both?
I hate Boeheim even more for this.