Expand the NCAA tournament? No, no and no

By Zach Mentz

It’s that time of year again. The NCAA basketball tournament is well underway and the entire nation is completely captivated. Brackets are being shredded, money being lost, and tears are being shed (in severe cases).
The madness began this year on Sunday, March 14th. College basketball teams and their fans all over the nation waited anxiously for their tournament fate to be decided on what is now known as “Selection Sunday.” Some bubbles were burst and some prayers were answered. Traditional powerhouses such as Connecticut and North Carolina were left out of the tournament while in the meantime lesser known teams such as Murray State and St. Marys made the field of sixty five with automatic bids by winning their respective conferences.
Yes that’s right. In case you did not know, the NCAA tournament fields sixty five teams each year to compete for the national championship. That is a boatload of basketball to be played and makes for even more opportunities for players to become heroes and history to be written.
If sixty five teams are not enough, how many teams deserve to get in? 96? 128? Or how about we let every team in and have a huge free for all for the national championship?
My response: Leave the tournament alone! There are those who argue that the NCAA tournament is not big enough and that it needs to be expanded. Excuse me, but how is sixty five teams not enough? Of the 65 spots in your bracket, 31 are automatically assigned to conference champions, leaving 34 spots for "at large" teams to be selected based on their performance throughout the course of the season.
Now there are 347 teams in D1 college basketball, so some argue that only 65 of those 347 teams making the tournament (just under 20%) is not nearly enough. The MLB lets 27% of teams in postseason and they are constantly criticized for needing to add teams to postseason play. So to some people, less than 20% of teams getting in to the NCAA basketball tournament just doesn’t sound right. To me though, it sounds just right.
The month of March in the world of sports is already dedicated to the NCAA tournament, thus the term “March Madness.” I have absolutely no problem with the way the tournament is currently set up and I have never thought anything needed to be changed. I don’t ever remember sitting in front of the television thinking to myself “This tournament needs an overhaul.” Sixty five teams are plenty to let compete for a national championship. If you can’t prove over the course of the regular season that you are one of the most deserving sixty five teams in the nation, then realistically you probably don’t have a chance at winning the national championship anyways. And that is the goal after all, isn’t it?
. The NCAA tournament may not be perfect, but it definitely is not broken either. The goal of the tournament is to make sure that the best team wins the national championship year in and year out, and I think it is fair to say that that has consistently happened time and time again. Too often in America we try to fix things that don’t need fixing. Until the NCAA tournament loses popularity and no one decides to watch it (which will not happen anytime soon), lets hold off on shaking things up. Bottom line: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.