NCAA Basketball Tournament Expands Teams

Things are set to change as the NCAA tournament expands. The NCAA basketball tournament will now include 68 tournament teams. The NCAA basketball committee voted unanimously to allow the increase. There are not that many tournament teams being added to the NCAA tournament. Instead of 65 teams there will now be 68.

After the Final Four press conference, it was obvious that NCAA basketball tournament would expand to add more teams. The question was by how much and what impact would it have on the NCAA tournament.

NCAA is contracted with CBS and Turner Sports to televise the tournament expansion and the multi-billion dollar contract is in effect now through 2024, according to Daniel Kablack of the Bleacher Report.

The NCAA basketball tournament expansion is expected to receive approval from the Board of Directors on April 29, 2010. Find out the positive and negative changes can we expect as the NCAA tournament expands in the 2010 - 2011 season.

NCAA Tournament Expansion Positives:

The NCAA was originally considering expanding from 65 to 96 NCAA basketball tournament teams. Thankfully, that did not happen. With a small tournament expansion of only three additional teams, it will not dilute the NCAA basketball tournament and could add to it. The extra NCAA tournament games will likely be broadcast on the stations owned by Turner: TNT and TBS.

Four opening round games will now be played instead of just one. (Bleacher Report) This falls under positive for me because I immensely enjoy the NCAA basketball tournament. This could mean some unforeseen upsets with low seeds beating top seeds early in the tournament.

It will balance the playing field so NCAA tournament bids will be based on the entire season rather than just tournament wins.

NCAA Tournament Expansion Negatives:

NCAA basketball tournament games will be played in a shorter amount of time due to the tournament expansion.

The negative of NCAA tournament expanding and having four opening round games is that there could be some bad basketball games, with top seeds playing low seeds.

George Dohrmann from Sports Illustrated purported that the selection process could become muddled if the tournament expansion reached 96 tournament teams. With only three teams being added the impact of expanding by only three teams will be minimal.

Hopefully, this tournament expansion does not open the door to gradually add more and more tournament teams to the point that it would dilute the NCAA basketball tournament experience.

Source:

NCAA Tournament Expands to 68-Teams, CBS and Turner to Televise, Daniel Kablack, Bleacher Report

Four reasons why NCAA tourney expansion would be horrible, George Dohrmann, Sports Illustrated