Expanded NCAA tournament field? Put me down as an enthusiastic ‘Yes’

May 9—Here’s a phrase nobody ever said with any level of conviction: Smaller is better.

OK, maybe waistlines, cost of living increases and golf scores.

Bigger is almost always better.

So, why the uproar over the NCAA plan to increase both the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments to 76 teams that will go into effect with the 2027 tournaments?

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Because the complainers — you know who you are — don’t think the change is needed. Why fix what isn’t broken, they will mutter to nobody in particular.

The better question: Why not add to the field? And why does it offend everyone so much? Time for a quick history lesson. Most college basketball fans will agree that in the first 40 years of the NCAA tournament, it wasn’t big enough.

Great teams stayed home year after year after year. Some of the best of all time had no opportunity to show it.

The tournament had just eight teams the first 12 years before expanding to 16 in 1951 and 20-plus starting in 1953.

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The field didn’t grow to 32 teams until 1975 and went to 40 teams three years later.

The first 64-team field arrived in 1985. That is 41 years ago with an increase of just four teams since that time. One team per decade.

Looking back, there were 282 Division I programs playing 40 years ago. Today, that number is 361 with more on the way. The increase in the size of the tournament hasn’t kept pace with the number of eligible teams. Not even close.

Little downside

I’m willing to listen to reasonable arguments about why the increase is bad. Are you worried about the quality of the games? That has often been an issue. The solution, one helped by blowout tournament losses, is for schools to improve their programs.

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I’ve heard repeatedly that the new eight teams “can’t win it all.” Why?

Forever, the talk was a No. 1 seed would never lose a first-round game to a No. 16 seed. Until it did. Thank you Maryland-Baltimore County for knocking off Virginia in 2018 by 20 points. I wasn’t there. But I was in the…

Source link : https://sports.yahoo.com/articles/expanded-ncaa-tournament-field-put-144700632.html

Author : Bob Asmussen, The News-Gazette, Champaign-Urbana, Ill.

Publish date : 2026-05-09 14:47:00

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