- Wounded Power Four teams would benefit most from March Madness expansion.
- In a 76-team bracket, more midmajors could be headed for play-in games.
- NCAA Tournament still at 68 teams this season. After that, who knows?
PENSACOLA, FL – Why does March Madness expansion dialogue stubbornly persist? Because, power conferences want more participation ribbons.
Expansion would be a boon for power conference teams that barely finish above .500. Collect your ribbon, and head to the dance.
What, though, would growing the NCAA Tournament to 72 or 76 teams do for mid-majors?
Take it from a guy who’s spent most of his career coaching those teams.
“Tournament expansion probably ain’t going to help the Sun Belt Conference, unfortunately,” said coach Scott Cross, whose Troy Trojans are headed to the NCAA Tournament for a second straight year, after securing their conference’s auto bid.
He’s right, of course, but you probably didn’t need Cross to spell it out. You can add two plus two and know it equals Power Four.
When was the last time a college sports evolution helped the little guy? This one wouldn’t, either.
The Sun Belt wouldn’t benefit from tournament expansion. Neither would the Southland, the conference where Cross used to coach. Wouldn’t help the Horizon, either. Or the Ohio Valley. I could go on, but you get the idea.
“I think the tournament is really special the way it is,” Georgia Southern coach Charlie Henry said, “so I would probably not be in favor of expanding.”
Henry’s Eagles won five games in five days to reach the Sun Belt tournament final before falling one win short of an auto bid. They won’t sniff an at-large selection to a 68-team bracket, and they wouldn’t at 76 teams, either. Expansion efforts aren’t designed to help their kind.
Don’t misunderstand what Cross and Henry are saying. Neither coach stumped for the Sun Belt to get a second bid. In fact, both coaches admitted their conference is a one-bid league. Just don’t expect them to support an expansion designed to benefit the 10th- and 12th- and 14th-place teams from the power leagues.
Tournament expansion would “allow more teams that are average at the Power Four level to get in,” Cross said. “I think the tournament is great the way it is.”
Amen, brother.
Most fans would agree. Too bad they aren’t calling the shots.
March Madness expansion all about the Power Four dregs
Greg Sankey, Tony Petitti, Brett Yormark and Jim Phillips are like the four horsemen of the 68-team tournament apocalypse. These Power Four conference commissioners just won’t let the expansion idea go. Expansion would carve out bids for the dregs of the mega conferences these commissioners created.
When you hear talk of a 76-team NCAA Tournament, understand it’s all geared toward rescuing teams like Auburn (16-15) and Indiana (18-13) from the NIT — or, declining an NIT bid, rather — and ushering them into the main event, courtesy of their repeated losses against better teams.
True, the expanded bracket would occasionally gift an at-large bid to a mid-major from an upper-middle class conference, but that’ll come at a cost.
For every 2024 Indiana State that’ll be buoyed by tournament expansion, there will be a half-dozen bids for teams like this year’s 14-loss Oklahoma Sooners.
The real travesty of tournament expansion wouldn’t even be the addition of more 14-loss teams from power conferences. That’s not great. This is worse: In a 76-team bracket, several additional low- and mid-majors could get relegated to play-in games.
That’s right, to be assured of a spot in the Round of 64, a mid-major might need to win its conference tournament and then also survive a game in Dayton, Ohio, or some additional site picked for the play-in carnival.
Imagine the case of Cross’ Troy Trojans. They won the Sun Belt’s regular season. They won the conference tournament. They’re headed to NCAA’s first round — for at least one more year, anyway. In a 76-team bracket, they could be relegated to a play-in game. That’s a slap of disrespect, and for what? So that a 12th-place power conference team can get a participation ribbon.
A bigger NCAA Tournament might shift more Cinderellas to play-in games
If a team wins its conference tournament to secure an auto bid, that ought to be good for a spot in the Round of 64 — the round most of us normies consider the real start to the tournament.
One 76-team format under consideration, according to On3’s reporting last fall, would slot 12 auto-bid qualifiers into play-in games, as well as 12 at-large qualifiers into the play-in round.
In other words, say goodbye to at least six potential Cinderellas before we even reach those Thursday and Friday games we love so dearly. That means fewer small-conference underdogs permitted access to the Round of 64 to try to pull off what Saint Peter’s did to Kentucky or what Princeton did to Arizona or what UMBC did to Virginia or Farleigh Dickinson did to Purdue.
“Those are my favorite two days the entire year, those first two days,” Cross said.
He’s not alone in that feeling, and we don’t love those two days for the chalk. We love them because teams like Hampton and Norfolk State and Oakland can bounce a big boy and earn their “One Shining Moment,” before the bigger brands reclaim the spotlight in the tournament’s later stages.
“It’s not broken,” Cross said of the NCAA Tournament. “It’s one of the greatest sporting events, in my opinion, anywhere. I love it the way it is.”
We love it in no small part because of the bracket-busting havoc underdogs inflict on Goliaths awash in booster bucks. If the power conferences get their expansion wishes, that’ll just mean more participation ribbons, at Cinderella’s expense.
Blake Toppmeyer is a columnist for the USA TODAY Network. Email him at BToppmeyer@gannett.com and follow him on X @btoppmeyer.