It is at all times instructive when one thing dangerous occurs to look again and determine how on the planet we bought right here.
Today we wake to the mustache painted on the Mona Lisa: The superbly good masterpiece of the NCAA event bracket graffitied with an extra eight groups. It would appear, very similar to Rabbi Noah and Joanne, no person wants this.
And but.
So how? How did the very dangerous, very pointless concept of tourney enlargement take maintain? Quite merely, truly. The bullies threatened to take their ball and go dwelling.
Back when the Big Ten determined to bloat itself from coast to coast, inflicting an avalanche of convention enlargement, the rumblings began a few doable secession. With all the facility and cash nestled among the many football-playing faculties – and no NCAA oversight over the soccer championship – why did these leagues even want the NCAA anymore? Why couldn’t they only create a governance construction of their very own and depart everybody else within the mud?
No one really thought they might do it, however even the doable risk that they may began a collection of dominoes that equated to the NCAA rolling over to have its stomach rubbed. The Power 4 earned a great degree of autonomy throughout the NCAA governance construction, incomes the best to require the NCAA to get their approval on main choices, creating sports-specific silos and even suggesting that they create a brand new NCAA subdivision unto themselves.
In January 2023, the NCAA additionally accredited a committee advice that each one sports activities’ championships ought to embody 25% of its groups. The math didn’t math for a 68-team discipline for 300-plus basketball groups, and so within the midst of their comparatively hostile takeover, the bullies additionally tossed the leaded balloon about event enlargement.
The argument was, shockingly, not for the larger good; it was to shield their very own entities.
With so many extra members of their leagues, groups would beat one another up, bastardizing their convention information and thereby making it tougher to earn an at-large bid. Never thoughts the truth that sports activities basically creates a quite simple resolution to such an issue referred to as competitors, whereby good groups – Hi, Florida! – handle simply fantastic with a 16-2 SEC file this season and dangerous ones – Sorry, Auburn! – with a 7-11 league end don’t.
Nobody thought they’d truly kill the NCAA event. In Philadelphia, folks nonetheless blame Villanova coach Rollie Massimino for killing the Big 5, their beloved metropolis round-robin. Imagine being the villain who kicked Cinderella to the curb.
So as a substitute, they’re simply making certain that Cinderella dances within the hallway, and never the precise ballroom. In its full spin cycle, the NCAA is touting that 21% of faculty basketball groups will now have an opportunity to play within the event, glossing over the truth that the chance is not created equally for everybody.
There will now be eight 16-seeds and 6 15s as a substitute of 4 apiece, which implies that a bunch of low- or mid-major groups will probably be pushed down their seedline and given tougher first-round video games.
Worse, historically, each 15-seed and two 16s made their means onto the bracket with no so-called play-in recreation. Now each 16 and half of the 15s will play on Tuesday and Wednesday, with solely the winners jetting their means into the primary weekend.
In real-world functions meaning UMBC may not have even earned the possibility to play, not to mention upset Virginia, and Saint Peter’s epic Elite Eight run may need been grounded in Dayton.
Instead, maybe plucky Oklahoma, with all of its monetary disadvantages, scheduling struggles and three-star gamers, might shake up the world.
Your future Cinderella, introduced to you by Texas Tech booster Cody Campbell as a substitute of a fairy godmother.
In 2010, Greg Shaheen, then the vp for males’s basketball, stood earlier than a roomful of reporters on the males’s Final Four and tried to filibuster his means by way of an argument for a discipline as massive as 96. His opening assertion was 2,025 phrases lengthy (sure, I counted again then). The complete factor went about as you would possibly count on, which is to say terribly. On the bottom of that we wound up with 68 groups and the First Four.
We all survived.
We will, in fact, survive this, too. The NCAA event is too good a product to destroy, regardless of some true finest efforts right here.
But the difficulty with giving a bully what he wants is he at all times wants extra. Open the henhouse to the fox and he doesn’t simply take one egg. There is no proof that the facility conferences will probably be sated. They have existed like gluttons at an Old Country buffet for years, gorging themselves on something and every thing that fattens their wallets.
They haven’t, as threatened, taken their ball and gone dwelling however what else will they need to stick round and play?