NCAA may expand men's basketball tournament (to NINETY-SIX teams!)

The first thing that popped into mind when I read this was, "Is this what it takes to make sure Chapel Hill never again has to play in the NIT?"

(rimshot)

I can tell already that I'm going to get heaps of grief from Chad and Eric about that :-P

The NCAA is now pondering the idea of expanding the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament from 65 teams to a whopping 96 schools going to the annual tournament. Under the proposed plan the National Invitational Tournament would be discontinued, the top 32 teams would receive byes and whole new brackets would be created for the embiggened tournament.

This sounds more like a hella big mess than the big dance, if you ask me. The current system ain't perfect, but it's about as nicely balanced as there's likely to be. Enlarging the field to 96 teams would do nothing to enhance the spectacle of the NCAA tournament and indeed, it would more likely as not diminish the passion and enthusiasm of March Madness as a whole.

And in case anyone's wondering: I still hope to see Elon go to the tournament some year. But I don't want to see my alma mater get to it like this.