More teams means more ticket sales and more money gets divided between all of the schools. Since all of the smaller leagues are mostly 1 bid even in a 96 team format, this really just puts more into the pockets of the BCS schools, and some into the next 4 like the Mountain West and the Atlantic 10.

The football powers that be claim that a playoff takes students out of class too much – despite the fact that 1-AA, D2, etc have playoffs and that the bulk of a potential playoff would take place in December when there are no classes (not counting mini-sessions).

Yet, when the NCAA wants to expand the basketball tournament these same people are mum on that issue.

I get that it’s about the money, but do these people honestly think that people believe the baloney they are spewing?

means that half of the teams would be playing 1 extra game. The way I have heard it, the 9-16 seeds in each region would now have a play-in game much like the lowest two 16 seeds do now.

In my mind, I don’t really care either way, as long as they play them all in one day at the home court of the higher-seeded team.

The bad thing though is that since a lot of the lower seeded teams would be teams that had to win their conference tournament, there is a legitimate chance that some of these teams will play on Sunday, travel to another teams site, play Tuesday, travel to the NCAA first round site, and play a team that has had at least 4 days rest. If this is the case, you will see many fewer Round of 64 upsets.

The opposite could happen too, because this will probably weed out a lot of the weaker conference championship teams that would probably lose anyways.

I think in the end, the quality of the round of 64 games will go up overall, but a lot of the magic of Random St. University beating BCS College will disappear. No one will care about the Play-in games past who goes on their 64-team bracket.

This is a pivotal time for the NCAA tournament. If it turns into 96 teams and gets thrown onto cable, it could really decrease the value of the tourney as a whole. It will also help the NCAA justify not having a football playoff because they are creating a self-fulfilling prophecy that once you start a tournament format, you can’t cap the number of teams that play in it and eventually it grows out of control.

In all of this, I blame the Big East. Their basketball coaches are whining that they only get 8 teams into the tourney when they feel that more deserve to get in and their football coaches know that unless the football tourney guarantees them a spot, they won’t have a team good enough to make it into the playoffs.

After the Calipari comments, I think that most people saw this coming. He knows he will get heckled mercilessly and he can’t take it. I say we create a fund to pay for whatever travel necessary to get him to Game Day. That way he will have to say the real reason he’s not coming, not this lame excuse.