NCAA Rant

The NCAA does not get many things correct. The institution often alienates the revenue-generating members which comprise it (see Jeremy Bloom and Andy Oliver cases).

Last April after seriously considering expanding the NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament from 65 to 96 teams, they thought better of it and decided on 68 teams. In a shocking turn of event, this decision actually seemed to make sense.

Upon further review, however, the method of adding these new teams is befuddling at best.

Instead of matching up the eight weakest teams against each other with the winners facing the top seeds in each of the four respective brackets, only the four lowest ranked teams will face each other (winners will be seed 16th). Then, four other teams identified by the selection committee will face each other with the winners seeded 11th, 12th, or 13th in the main bracket.

Why should four teams that the committee identifies as being "better than" at least 10 other teams* have to participate in a play-in game?

Pure stupidity.



* All four of the 14 and 15 seeds plus two of the 16 seeds