COLLEGE BASKETBALL HAS been here before.
Exactly 50 seasons ago, the late Lefty Driesell's Maryland Terrapins were one of the best teams in the country. They rose as high as No. 2 in the national rankings and played NC State for that year's Atlantic Coast Conference title in Greensboro, North Carolina. They dropped that game in an epic overtime struggle, 103-100, to the eventual national champions.
But that generational Maryland squad featuring the likes of Len Elmore, John Lucas and Tom McMillen would never face the other powers of the day--UCLA, Marquette, Notre Dame, etc. -- in the NCAA tournament because there were no at-large invitations to what was then a Not-Nearly-As-Big-A-Dance. Never a fan of NCAA bureaucrats, Driesell groused that no way would seven-time defending champion UCLA be excluded from the 25-team field under similar circumstances (the Pac-8 had no postseason tourney, so the point was moot).
Four years earlier, another iconic coach, Marquette's Al McGuire, told the NCAA to take a hike when tournament organizers slotted the No. 8 Warriors for the Midwest Region in Fort Worth, Texas, instead of the Mideast Region in much nearer Dayton, Ohio. Marquette opted instead to play in the equally prestigious NIT, knocking off St. John's at Madison Square Garden to win that title.
The sport's power brokers were facing an existential crisis in the 1970s. How could the NCAA rightly crown a champion when its own tournament didn't include all the best teams? One immediate remedy was the creation of a rule that banned any school invited to an NCAA postseason championship from participating in a competing event.
The rest of the NCAA's answer came in the form of incremental change. The 1975 tournament grew from 25 to 32 teams, allowing for a second bid for up to seven conferences. That move paid off just one year later when Big Ten rivals Indiana and Michigan collided in the title game and the Hoosiers capped the sport's last perfect season. The tourney field reached 40 teams by 1980, 52 by 1983 and the bracket of 64 -- with no limit on the number of at-large selections from a single conference -- becoming a fixture in 1985.
Minor changes aside, there has been peace in the Division I men's basketball kingdom for the better part of four decades. Even the First Four, which came about in 2011 and grew the field to 68 teams, has been accepted by the masses. Fans and bracketologists alike still quibble over the last few selections and some seedings, but no reasonable observer believes that any potential champions are being excluded.
Today's crisis is different. The evolution of major intercollegiate athletics is threatening one of the most universally loved sporting events on earth. As major college football schools continue to chase every dollar, a break-off from the masses -- including a separate basketball championship -- seems like a distinct possibility. What could be more capitalistic than a tournament featuring every power conference member? Or, worse, a tournament featuring only power conference members?
But so far no one, including and especially those who count eyeballs for a living, has chosen to mess with a great thing. The viewing public strongly prefers having Duke and Sister Jean and Penn State and Penn in the same bracket. It's not charity to put mid-majors in the bracket -- just look at every David and Goliath ratings bonanza we've witnessed since the original Hoosiers of Milan (Indiana) High School gave us the first March Madness.
That doesn't mean the tournament can simply stay the same. There are compromises that need to be made in order to preserve the larger ideals of the tournament that we all know and love. If it wants to stave off some kind of unrecognizable major-only postseason future, the tournament will need to expand, as it did in the '70s and '80s.
AS IT IS, the current 68-team field comprises just 18.8% of Division I membership. Compare this to the original 64-team field representing 80 fewer D-I schools -- 282, not the present 362 -- in 1985 (22.7%). It is easier to make the NFL playoffs (43.8%) or even the MLB postseason (40.0%) than the NCAA tournament. The NCAA's own transformation committee recommends 25% access to championships in sports sponsored by 200 or more member institutions.
Like it or not, the men's basketball championship must expand to save itself. The purists may say "no, nay, never," but to hold firm is to further endanger the long-term future of that which they fervently hope to preserve. Carefully crafted expansion, conducted over an examinable period of time, is even more critical in today's climate than it was when McGuire, Driesell and others battled with the suits.
Smart expansion won't be easy. There are many, many vested interests. The power schools pouring millions into their programs expect and deserve a return on that investment. And the very capable mid-majors have proved they belong on the same court in a sport that requires only five starters and not 22.
If and when NIL comes in-house and athletes become employees, the need for additional revenue will only increase. And media partners aren't going to ante up for an inferior product, so some low majors or even a handful of conferences may be forced into a non-Division I alternative.
Any proposal, as was the case 50 years ago, must meet certain benchmarks. The new tournament must be profitable enough for both "haves" and "have nots" to play in the same sandbox. It must be concise enough to maintain the existing and extremely popular tournament calendar. It has to be flexible enough to allow for changes in future realignment and/or media acquisitions. And it needs to be simple enough for the casual fan to participate in via their bracket contests.
ABOUT A DECADE ago, your intrepid bracketologist was sitting nervously in an ESPN green room with Bobby Knight. It was Selection Sunday and the legendary coach was about to go on set.
"Let me ask you a question," Knight said. "Would I be a [insert derogatory noun of your choice] if I said we could stop all this bickering by going to 96 or 128 teams?"
Thinking quickly, I said, "Coach, between us we've won 902 games and you have all of them, so please take this with all humility on my part. That many teams, at least right now, is a colossally bad idea."
I proceeded to show Coach Knight the teams that were No. 96 and even No. 128 on our board that year. He said, "No way should those teams play for a national championship." And that was good enough for me.
That said, access to the tournament is going to be an acute issue when the Big Ten and ACC each have 18 teams and the Big 12 and SEC have 16 apiece. Realistically, UCLA's or Oregon's move isn't knocking Illinois or Indiana out of the tournament. Same for Texas and Oklahoma in the SEC and Arizona, et al, in the Big 12. The only way the math works is to add spots, otherwise power conference realignment will punish mid-majors even more than it already has or, worse, lead to the dreaded Division I breakup.
My recommended compromise, at least until the next round of major media negotiations in 2032, is to expand the NCAA field to 80 teams. We know the format of the current First Four works. So why not have additional play-in games so 12 teams can be added to the mix? Even if eight of these new slots end up going to what I've often called "middling" majors, that still leaves four new spots for truly deserving mid-majors. Everybody wins.
Imagine Indiana State and Drake in the field, not one or the other. Imagine Grand Canyon losing a late-night Selection Saturday WAC title game and still getting in. Heck, imagine an at-large bid one day for the Ivy League. You mean to tell me a Princeton team at 26-4 isn't more interesting or capable than a name-that-state school that went 8-14 in a 22-game conference schedule?
As far as other tweaks go: Keep the University of Dayton Arena in a semi-permanent rotation for one of the pre-regional groupings. Play the others at existing first weekend sites or, when possible, pay homage to tradition by having those Tuesday/Wednesday games at historic venues in or near existing host cities. I'm thinking Cameron Indoor, Phog Allen, Hinkle, Pauley, the Palestra. That'll leave no more than a bus ride for teams advancing to the next round. It's a no-brainer.
It's important to maintain the current tournament calendar and cadence. So, if extra time is required for travel and team prep, move the five remaining Selection Sunday championship games back a day or two and have the Selection Show at noon. We can't go the other way into April, as the annual Final Four date is determined primarily by the scheduling of the Masters.
Why not more than 80 teams? During the post-COVID season of 2020-21, we didn't know until midseason how many teams (if any) would be in that year's tournament. So Bracketology included several weeks of a 96-team projection. That format would have given the top 32 teams a first-round bye, had Thursday/Friday repeat itself Saturday/Sunday with 16 games apiece, and then had the round of 32 on a Monday/Tuesday wraparound. Six marathon days, in other words, would have been required to maintain the current calendar.
That's just too much basketball in too short a time frame. There's also the whole "the players have to go to school" thing, not to mention the matter of team quality in such a bloated arrangement. The last selections for a 96-team field on our board as of this writing are Xavier (13-13, 7-8 Big East) and Maryland (14-13, 6-10 Big Ten). The two have an aggregate Quad 1 record of 4-18 and are 6-16 in games away from home. Yuck. Or, put another way: Bob Knight was right.
At an 80-team cutoff, we'd be looking at Kansas State and Pitt as the last teams in. Both have top 75 NET rankings and have a combined dozen wins against Quads 1 and 2. Conveniently, the 12 "additional" teams from this year's board would comprise eight power conference schools along with four mid-majors. Things won't always work out this way, but you get the idea.
Under this format, all of our boxes would be checked. We'd give schools at every level an incentive to stick together for a greater good and, most importantly, buy some time until the current TV contract expires to determine the value of and desire for additional expansion. Say what you want about the NCAA, but the association has been here before and gotten it right.
BEFORE WE LEAVE the NCAA to its own devices, let's spend a final moment on the topic of competitive equity.
Longtime readers know we have advocated annually for a "Lunardi Rule" that would require teams to be at least .500 in their conference games (including conference tourneys) to become NCAA tournament-eligible. Such a qualifying condition, rightfully, will have zero traction in the megaconference era.
But what shouldn't be off the table is some minimum requirement for an at-large bid. It could be record-based, schedule-based (e.g., a road/neutral quota) or connected to some other metric. What can't happen is a team going 5-15 in a power league, posting multiple Q1 wins only because of built-in homecourt opportunities, and still receiving an NCAA bid thanks to a biased counting exercise.
This minor remedy of "tournament eligibility" would have a major effect on the end result. I'd even go so far as to increase revenue unit value for those advancing in the tournament if that's what it takes for the power conferences to accept that not every expanded berth is for them.
"College basketball," noted Dayton athletic director Neil Sullivan, who has power conference resources in a next-tier conference, "has reached its practical point of limitations to evaluate teams. It's not possible to credibly evaluate teams that do not play each other, that do not have common opponents and that do not have a reasonably equal chance to 'statistically prove' their strength through competition. A team cannot pass the test if it cannot even take the test."
While we're at it, let's not add any at-large teams at the expense of current automatic qualifiers. If it were up to me, all Tuesday/Wednesday participants (now and in an 80-team field) would be at-large selections. This is for the same reason a 9-8 NFC South champion gets a home playoff game against a 12-5 wild card. At-large teams are all wild cards; automatic qualifiers won something and should be rewarded accordingly.
This isn't just about preserving the NCAA tournament. It's about making it even better. See you on Selection Sunday.