Why Switching to 96 Teams in the NCAA Tournament is a Huge Mistake

The talk of expanding the NCAA Tournament field to 96 teams, up from the 64 that fill up our brackets during March Madness now, has gained some momentum lately. Many of the biggest NCAA men's basketball coaches have been outspoken in favor of expanding the field.

Sure, it makes sense for them. More tournament appearances enhances their and their school's resumes, keeps boosters happier, possibly lures in more recruits and ultimately will help to keep more of them employed for longer periods of time. But for the rest of us, NCAA Tournament expansion to 96 teams is a big mistake. Here's why it's a bad move for college basketball and should be avoided.

More Is Not Better: Just ask NBA basketball fans watching a month of playoff games before the good stuff even gets started. March Madness with 64 teams is perfect. It keeps you interested and moving along the whole time and there is a huge range of games to watch, but it doesn't burn anybody out. Extending the tournament with more games and more teams is really just more clutter and more wasted time. It won't make the first two days of the tournament any better, and it won't change the final 8 or 16 teams standing.

Since When is Mediocrity Rewarded?: Every now and then, an 8-8 NFL team slips into the playoffs, or a baseball team wins its division with 81 games when a Wild Card team from another division needed 95 to get in. But 96 teams in the NCAA Tournament is going to lead to far too much mediocrity in the field. There's already a ton of average teams dancing into March Madness every year, and the 2010 tournament field is a great case in point.

Goodbye Regular Season: For the best teams in the country, the regular season is already nothing more than a tune-up and a chance to lock down a good seed for March Madness. But if 96 teams get into the tournament field, what exactly would be the point of playing some 30-plus games and hosting conference tournaments which are already mostly futile? Why don't you just have a preseason top 100 ranking, skip ahead a few months, make them all 18-16 and draw sticks for seeding?

The BCS Still Exists: I refuse to live in a society where the BCS makes a yearly mockery out of competition in college football and nobody will stand up to change it, but undermining tweaks to March Madness, the best tournament in sports, will be easily accepted. I thought one of the huge arguments against a college football playoff system was that adding more games takes away from the players actually being, you know, students. But more games and a quick money-grab that puts the beauty of the NCAA Tournament at risk is a good idea? C'mon people...

These are just a few of the many reasons why expanding the NCAA Tournament to 96 teams is a bad idea. March Madness is the finest that sports has to offer, and as the 2010 NCAA Tournament begins, it's important that we realize why it's important to keep it just the way that it is.