96 teams is lose for everyone....

- You make the dance, it's "everyone makes the dance"
- You don't it's "come on, everyone makes the dance!"
- The regular season will be diminished
- Cinderella has to play an extra game, and win another game to make the Sweet 16.
- The teams who AREN'T getting in and deserve to, are going to get in... but so will tons of teams who DON'T deserve to get in (cough, BCS teams finishing 6th-10th).
- The mid-majors revenue shares go down, as the pie is sliced more ways.
- The committee is basically going to control who gets TWO shares (byes) and who gets one... which is going to screw over the 9-seeds.
- The seeding is going to be way more important than in years past. Not to mention the amount of stuff that will slip through the cracks when the committee realizes a 96-team bracket takes longer to complete than a 64/65-team.
- We'll get tons of stupid re-matches between conference teams in the round of 32. You'll have to, because 10 teams will be getting in from the Big East, ACC and Big 12.
- There will be fewer upsets, since the teams with byes will have more time to prepare, and be fresher (unless they are Big East teams, double-bye much?)


If you're going to expand beyond 64, expand to a full 128.

Give automatic bids to regular season AND tourney champions. That's a maximum of 61 autos and 67 at-larges.

- It keeps teams playing the same number of games.
- It eliminates the argument of "who's the last team in? 22-9 Stonybrook, who WON the AmEast regular season (#142 RPI) or a 16-16 UNC team that finished 10th in the ACC?"
- It keeps the #1 seeds playing worse teams in the Round of 64 than other seeds. If you've got #20 Houston vs #12 Utah State, and Houston wins... #5 Texas A&M is playing a #20 seed, and #1 Duke is playing #16 VCU. Not really fair to the #1 seeds.

_________________
1897-1898 | 1900-06 | 1926-27 | 1929-30 | 1939 | 1942

I hate that idea. The conference tournaments are the problem. I find no reason to give (2) undeserving teams bids. If Kennesaw St wins the A-sun regular season at 15-14 and North Florida at 10-19 wins the conference tournament, then both would get in over a 19-11 Mississippi St. team that say beat power seed teams Florida, LSU and Alabama in a given year.

It's got to be 1 of the other: either give the bid to the conference champs or the tourney champs.

A better plan for the conferences are to ALL go down the path that the WCC has set, along with the Big East. Give the top 2 seeds in the conference tourney byes through the semi-finals. That's the reward for finishing at the top of the conference. Teams 3 and 4 get byes to the quarter finals as a reward. That was you are protecting your top teams and increasing the chances that the best of the best get in.

If you reward conference like the A-Sun with 2 bids, it means the conference champ could throw the conference tourney and rest it's players since they'd know they'd be in already.

_________________


@ncaasports csi.com/facebook


Like the new CSI Userbar? Feel free to use it here and any other forums.
You can save and host it yourself or link from here.

Here's the problem...

first off, my "give the regular season champs autobids" was for a 128-team tournament. If you have a 128-team tournament, you'd expect that virtually all of the top 120 of the RPI is going to make it. Only five regular season champs were over 120 of the RPI, and with nine top 120 teams under .500 (or at .500 at 100+ of the RPI), those champs would steal about FOUR bids for a 128-team tourney.

22-9 Stony Brook (#142 RPI) which would be the highest RPI team left out without based solely on RPI; plus 23-9 Quinnipiac (#147), 19-11 Campbell (#182 RPI), and 19-12 Jackson St (#199)... they'd go at the expense of #139 Rider 17-16, #134 Niagara, 18-15, #130 UW Milwaukee, 18-14 and #115 Creighton 16-15.

Is that so horrible?

THE BIGGER PROBLEM is that the recent rage of Gourmet Cupcake stores will basically spread to teams schedules if they expand to 96. Every BCS team is going to say "we have to schedule so if we go 4-12 in conference, we can still be over .500 and get an at-large.

Why is Carolina going to bother to play Ohio State, Syracuse, Michigan State, Kentucky, and Texas? Replace those games with MEAC schools, and Carolina is 19-13 and a LOCK for the dance.

Rutgers? L Florida, L UNC. Replace those with two cupcake wins, and they are 16-15 and dancing.

"Well, playing a cupcake schedule will kill their RPI." Kind of, but it won't matter because of conference effect. If everyone in your conference wins non-conference games against cupcakes, the total W-L of your opponents increases your total SOS, and the Win Pct.

The other thing you do, is you lower the number of conference games, which guarantees losses to your conference. The A-10 WOMEN play 14 games. one vs everyone, then a second vs their "rival."

To illustrate the point. I ran RPI numbers for the A-10 for playing the WORST conceivable schedule.... IF:
- Each team plays 16 non-conference games against 275+ of the RPI.
- The average SOS value for those 275+ is .2470
- Each team's record vs 275+ is the same pct as their actual 2009-10 performance (except Fordham, gave them an extra loss to make math easier)
- Each team plays half at home, half on the road (just made my math easier)
- Each team's league record is the same as 2009-10, only dropping the result of a second meeting with a team they played twice.
- The rival game is the last game of the season in this hypothetical season, and NOT YET PLAYED.

Entering the last game of the regular season (just so I didn't have to go team by team with an unbalanced schedule) the results were:

13 of 14 were well over .500 (18-11 or better)
TEN teams were in the top 96 of the RPI (GW was 96th).

So, you're talking about "playing an easier schedule" getting NINE Atlantic 10 teams into the dance... a team that lost to Mississippi State by FIFTY is safely in the field.


IF the NCAA is going to expand, they need to add caveats for conference record. Like "No team win a conference win pct under .350 will be eligible for an at-large." (That's at least 7-11 for conferences with 18 games, 6-10 for conferences with 16 games).

Because otherwise, it's going to be the 75 BCS teams playing RPI games in the dance and the fewer mid-majors in the dance because no one will play them. Ever.

_________________
1897-1898 | 1900-06 | 1926-27 | 1929-30 | 1939 | 1942

Another issue is travel/class time missed. Here's their proposed 96-team schedule.

WK DAYS Teams in action (Change) Teams missing Class (Change)
1 TUE/WED: 0 teams (-2) 0 (-2)
1 THR/FRI: 64 teams (0) 64 (0)
1 SAT/SUN: 64 teams (+32) 0 (0)
2 TUE/WED: 32 teams (+32), 32 (+32)
2 THR/FRI: 16 teams (0), 16 (0)
2 SAT/SUN: 8 teams (0), 0 (0)
3 SAT: four teams (0), 0 (0)
3 MON: two teams (0), 2 (0)

So 30 teams are missing additional classes

But... 32 teams were playing in the NIT, which goes away.
1 T/W: 16 road teams missing classes
2 M/T/W: 4 road teams missing classes
3 TUE: 4 teams at MSG missing classes
3 TH: 2 teams at MSG missing classes

26 teams missing classes.

So the NCAA's plan adds class time missed for only four teams.

They could easily solve this....

SELECTION SUNDAY
WK DAYS Teams in action (Change) Teams missing Class (Change)
1 TUE/WED: 0 teams (-2) 0 (-2)
1 THR/FRI: 64 teams (0) 64 (0)
1 SAT/SUN: 64 teams (+32) 0 (0)
2 THR/FRI: 32 teams (+16), 32 (+16)
2 SAT/SUN: 16 teams (+8), 0 (0)
3 FRI: 8 teams (+8), 8 (+8)
3 SUN: four teams (0), 0 (0)
4 TUE: two teams (0), 2 (0)

+22 teams missing class time, but the NIT had 26, so you SAVE four teams from missing class.
Of course, that costs TV Friday's programming.

My 128-team proposal:

Move the regular season so it ends five days earlier, on Selection Wednesday.

The big conference tourneys would start on the previous Saturday or Sunday. The teams who advance through the conference tournament are the ones missing class time. Currently, everyone misses time, then the teams that win stay through the weekend. That's stupid.

So, we start conference tourneys four days earlier. Selection Wednesday, then we start the 128-team tournament on SAT/SUN (that was Championship Week's Sat/Sun under our current format)

WK DAYS Teams in action (Change) Teams missing Class (Change)
0 SAT/SUN: 128 teams (0) 128 (0)
1 TUE/WED: 0 teams (-2) 0 (-2)
1 THR/FRI: 64 teams (0) 64 (0)
1 SAT/SUN: 32 teams (0), 32 (0)
2 THR/FRI: 16 teams (0), 16 (0)
2 SAT/SUN: 8 teams (0), 0 (0)
3 SAT: four teams (0), 0 (0)
4 MON: two teams (0), 2 (0)

That SAVES class time from the CURRENT NCAA tourney (2 teams from the Opening Round).
It eliminates 58 teams missing class for the NIT, CBI and CIT dates.
It saves teams from missing classes during conference tournaments: 73 teams fewer teams/dates from the BCS/MWC/A10.
Another 42 from the SWAC/SoLand/MEAC/WAC/BWest.

That's a grand total of 173 teams/dates saving class time under my proposal, before factoring in any changes to conferences that don't play the final weekend.

But, you'd have to an extra mid-week trip in the regular season with a shorter season. But in the regular season, only HALF of the 346 D-I teams would be be playing at home. Half of 346 = 173.

_________________
1897-1898 | 1900-06 | 1926-27 | 1929-30 | 1939 | 1942

good post Jp.

Seems the best solution is for the NCAA to drop the academic portion and just treat sports like it's any other revenue stream, like having concerts. it's time to take the "student" out of "student-athlete".

I kid.

_________________


@ncaasports csi.com/facebook


Like the new CSI Userbar? Feel free to use it here and any other forums.
You can save and host it yourself or link from here.

SBJ article discussing NCAA/CBS negotiations on possible new BB tourney tv deal at http://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/article/65407

http://www.ajc.com/sports/ncaa-to-expand-march-483424.html

reasonable compromise
keeps the traditionalists off the ledge

CONFERENCES LIKELY TO PLAY ON TUESDAY

SUMMIT LEAGUE
AMERICA EAST
SOUTHLAND
PATRIOT
BIG SOUTH
MEAC
NORTHEAST
SWAC

How about a suggestion that no automatic qualifier play on Tuesday



http://www.nysportsday.com/2010/04/23/for-the-ncaa-tourney-68-is-just-great/

I hope they due go to 128 soon. How many D1 schools is at now?

_________________
The Bear may be dead but he still hates Tennessee. Roll Damn Tide

With the tournament now being on 3 channels, and one of them being Tru TV, I'd think it wouldn't be a problem now to expand to 128. Especially with 1st round games on campus.

_________________


@ncaasports csi.com/facebook


Like the new CSI Userbar? Feel free to use it here and any other forums.
You can save and host it yourself or link from here.