Reseed the Final Four? That idea is as bad as last time I heard it

Reseed the Final Four.

You’re going to hear that idea this week, with the top two teams in college basketball, Arizona and Michigan, meeting in the semifinals instead of the national championship, while UConn faces Illinois in the other semifinal.

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Like a lot of ideas, this one sounds good in the theory stage. Peel back the layers, though, and envision what reseeding the Final Four would mean in practice, and the idea loses footing.

Reseeding would require disrupting the original structure of the bracket.

I’ve said it before, I’ll say it again, and I’ll keep saying it as long as the NCAA has this tournament format: Leave the tournament alone.

I’ll say it once more for effect: Leave. The. Bracket. Alone.

Do not tweak. Do not tinker. Do not implement any harebrained ideas or add more mediocre teams or shuffle the assignments once the Final Four arrives.

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The tournament is one thing the NCAA gets right. Take a bow, and enjoy it.

It’s not broken. Don’t fix it.

Still, it seems like such a simple adjustment, right? Now that the Final Four teams are set, just flip Arizona and Illinois and have the two 1-seeds on opposite seeds of the bracket.

And that’s when it hits you: The bracket. That beautiful creation is the star of this show. That’s why you cannot simply reseed the Final Four. You’d disrupt all of those brackets people filled out the day after Selection Sunday, when they were supposed to be working but instead were researching that, yes, High Point over Wisconsin is the best possibility for a 12 vs. 5 upset. And that, yes, Arizona and Michigan will win their regions and meet in the semifinals.

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They’ll meet in the semifinals. Not the finals. That’s what you wrote down on your bracket.

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Publish date : 2026-04-01 08:32:00

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