Keith Cordero Jr.: What’s wrong with a little expansion?
Despite the upsets in the NCAA Tournament the field should be expanded, not to 96, but to maybe 72. There are always five to 10 bubble teams that miss the cut of 65 every season, so let’s just add those seven teams into the field in one extra round and the expansion question will be settled.
The Cinderella stories of the Sweet 16 are nice, with 12th-seeded Cornell, 10th-seeded St. Mary’s and ninth-seeded Northern Iowa all still playing, and that’s why we love the tournament.
An expanded field adds more games and more drama to an already great tournament filled with plenty of excitement. We need more finishes like No. 14 seed Ohio’s upset over No. 3 seed Georgetown in the first round.
Also, the tournament is great in college, so why not get rid of the BCS in college football and transfer the men’s basketball format to college football?
Christopher Losee: What’s right about it?
Keith, did you even see the seeds before they started playing the tournament? Why would
you expand a tournament that was already weak to begin with? If we were to expand the tournament, there would not be those Cinderella stories and fantastic finishes because of many low-seeded teams with a smaller fraction being powerhouse top-seeded teams.
Audiences have been more than pleased with the scheduled matches that have been shown throughout the month of March Madness, especially heading
into the Elite Eight. Upsets to Kansas, Georgetown and
Villanova are the kind of games that satisfy the setup of 65 teams being allowed in the tournament. If UH can make it into the tournament, I think it is set up in a way that any team has a chance in their conference to make an appearance.
If a team misses the cut, they weren’t meant for the tournament in the first place. You seem to be more interested in changing football, so worry about that and let the tournament play-out.
Jason Ovalle: Won’t somebody please think of the children?
This is no doubt the best time of year for any true hoops fan, and the NCAA tournament is fine just the way it is. The NCAA already expanded a few years ago when they added a play-in-game to determine who becomes the 64th seed.
The proposed expansion is just a pure money grab for the networks and the presidents of big time college programs in the major conferences. This would allow more subpar schools to get in with average or below average records.
I think a lot of us forget, especially those who are not attending a university or college, that these players are student athletes. This means they are not at school not only to play basketball, but also to get an education. Extending the NCAA tournament to accommodate more games will only cause a bigger burden on these student athletes. It will take them away from more school and hindering their academic progress.
So Chris, you make some good points, and Keith, football season isn’t till the fall…
But like the saying goes, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
Judge Higgs: Final word
There’s a nice progression with the arguments this week, kind of like our species’ evolution from ape to man.
Keith, it’s nice that you ended your argument with something almost no one could disagree with, that NCAA football needs a playoff system, but that can’t hide the ridiculousness of the rest of it. Let me see if I understand what you’re saying. It’s that a little bit of watering down is not only OK, but will improve the product?
Let me try to make clear the point that you and anybody arguing for the expansion of the tournament seem to be missing. It’s true that a lot of what makes March Madness magical are the Cinderella stories. But what gives a team’s story that particular Cinderella-like flare we all know and love is when they come from nowhere and beat a big-name school. Nobody cares if an unknown school plays another unknown. So the argument that expanding the field will allow for more Cinderella magic is, to quote Ricky Gervais’ favorite line from his new show, “bollocks.”
If it’s so clear to most of us that we want a playoff system in college football because we know that is the best way to determine who should be champion, why do we forget that when it comes to college basketball? As much fun as it is to watch an unknown team make a run, the point of the tournament is to crown the NCAA basketball champion, not to give as many teams as possible a shot at the dance.
