The bracket has officially been busted.
Not an individual NCAA basketball bracket where you failed to pick the correct winners. It’s worse than that.
Every future bracket has been busted before the games are even played, because the powers that be will fail to select the right teams to participate in the first place.
The bracket familiar to me for my entire life included only teams which deserved to be there.
The NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments will expand from 68 to 76 teams, starting next season. The NCAA selection committee voted unanimously, which means the rest is a formality, unless the oversight committees surprisingly have a last-ditch say.
What are we talking about when it comes to oversight? You’d think it would be oversight of universities, but everybody knows finances are the only consideration.
The system is off the rails when it comes to NIL access and distribution, unlimited transfers equating to permanent free agency and revenue sharing for athletes. The NCAA basketball tournament is one of the industry’s primary cash cows.
So, it makes sense to add eight teams from a money standpoint. The reason you need more money, however, is because the system is broken.
Ruining the integrity of the NCAA basketball bracket is a shameful solution.
Next season, 52 teams will be slotted into the initial main bracket and eight teams will be added to the play-in round. Instead of eight teams playing four games in that round, 24 teams will play in 12 games.
Regrettably, six of the new play-in games will include the 12 lowest placed automatic conference champ qualifiers, rather than four. All of those teams will deserve to be there.
Six games, however, will include the 12 lowest at-large bids. Most of those teams won’t deserve to be there.
The assumption is that most, if not all, of the new eight spots will go to teams in the middle of the Big Ten, Big 12 and Southeastern Conference standings. More teams like Texas last season.
The Longhorns won two more games after winning in the play-in round. Can an uninspiring team from a power conference win a few games in the tournament? Of course.
But there’s no reason (except money) to include undeserving teams which couldn’t win enough games before the tournament starts. Many of these teams will need only to be average, i.e., unworthy.
A bid to the NCAA tournament should be earned. If you’re 17-16 in your conference, no matter how strong, it shouldn’t be the season you received an invite to the dance.
If the bracket were going to be changed, generating more money should never be the basis. Therefore, we are going to be told that the field was expanded in the name of opportunity.
Not only are they no longer capable of doing the right thing, they pretend they’re giving us something. In reality, they’re taking the TV money because they’re spending so much money.
The tournament isn’t better, only bigger. Just like the football tournament, where there is a push for 24 teams, even though one of the top six teams will win the championship every year.
Eight would have been great and 12 works just fine. Money says there will be more very soon.
The additional spots in both sports will never go to teams with a legitimate chance of winning a championship. They’ll have the opportunity to not win?
Who cares? The people who need more money.
The current play-in format started in 2011, with Virginia Commonwealth and UCLA advancing to the Final Four since.
The ‘opportunity’ argument has always been a thing; it’s called the bubble. It wasn’t until the money problems that we even heard about the foolishness of 76.
Instead of fixing what’s broken, they diminish something that was already beloved. The only reason these mediocre teams which have no business in the field will be there is because it puts more money in the vault.
What about the integrity of the bracket and years of tradition? It’s one of the most popular and cherished events in all of sports.
It’s over as we knew it and everybody says, ‘Well, they needed the money.’ Fix the system. One time.
This whole, ‘There are no excuses necessary because the need for money is the excuse,’ thing is no longer tolerable.
We’re about to have eight crappy teams in the NCAA tournament because, revenue. It will never be what it was.
While the disingenuous pretend it’s progress, some of us will mourn a busted bracket.
mhorn@gannett.com
419-307-4892
X: @MatthewHornNH
This article originally appeared on Fremont News-Messenger: NCAA basketball brackets expanded from 68 to 76 for March Madness