There are precious few truly perfect things in this world.
That ice-cold beer after push-mowing the yard? Perfect. A 300 game in bowling? Perfect. Birdieing 18 with a sick twisting putt to win a bet off your buddy? Perfect. Witnessing 27 up and 27 down in person? Yep… perfect.
Up until Tuesday afternoon, we would have easily added the NCAA Tournament to that rarefied perfect list. But because the NCAA is the NCAA, the fine folks in Indianapolis have reportedly approved the mother of all stupid ideas to tinker with our beloved March Madness.
The format that begat a generation of mid-major moments and buzzer beaters galore is in the closing stages of being diluted into a 76-team extravaganza of mediocrity for both men’s and women’s basketball.
Have you ever tried to wrap your big brain a 76-team bracket? What does that monstrosity even look like?
We are about to find out, people, as the Mount Everest of stupidity has finally been summited and what was the most beautiful tournament in organized sports is fixing to become your iced tea that sat out on the pool deck all afternoon.
Watered down. Tasteless. Unrecognizable and certainly undesirable.
Now, we are aware of the counter-arguments, which that most certainly will be counter-programmed by the fine folks who hold the media rights to both the men’s and women’s tournaments. More teams means more opportunity. Deserving bubble teams get the chance to wend their way through the spider web of a bracket and prove their bona fides. NCAA uniform patches for everyone!
But just like the massive stomachache noted great American patriot Joey Chestnut must endure around sunset every Fourth of July, there is such a thing as too much of a good thing.
And expanding the brackets to 76 teams falls squarely into that category – especially seeing as how it isn’t very likely that the mid-major programs that don’t win their conference tournament (we’re talking about you, Miami of Ohio…) won’t be seeing many of those new spots anyway.
This expansion is all about the power conferences, specifically for the 2025-26 Auburns of the world to get their precious NCAA uniform patches by “earning” 1 of the 8 additional at-large bids. What was known until now as the First Four will now expand to 12 games featuring 24 teams at 2 different sites.
The way we presume it will work is that the Tuesday and Wednesday of the NCAA Tournament will feature 24 of the 76 teams. That number now includes 8 teams who would have qualified for the traditional bracket that will square off against the 8 at-large additions.
After that, the traditional 64-team men’s bracket will still begin on Thursday and look much the same – as will, we assume, the women’s bracket later in the weekend.
Ladies and gentlemen, start your confusion.
While this could certainly be labeled as a shameless cash grab by an NCAA that already makes bazillions on the media rights for the men’s tournament… it isn’t expected that the yet-to-be-signed new media rights deals will deliver a profound windfall. And even with an increase on what the NCAA takes in, they’ll now have to dole more out in the form of increased travel for more teams and more “units” to pay out to the 16 more teams (8 men, 8 women) that get to punch their quasi-ticket to the big dance.
We say “quasi-ticket” because, really, did we really regard those First Four teams as full-fledged March Madness teams in the first place? Of course not. They were either cannon fodder for the Dukes and Michigans and UConns and South Carolinas of the world and/or about to be stone exhausted by the time their “first round game” rolled around days after playing their “First Four” game.
The access argument is all fine and good until the very first time we witness a 16-16 team start bragging about earning its shot at March Madness. Because I defy any college basketball coach or general knower of ball to strap themselves to a polygraph machine and try to make the argument that they actually deserve that shot with a straight face.
Gordon Gekko practically defined a generation by brashly proclaiming that “greed is good,” but practically no one remembers that the fictional Gekko actually went to jail for pursuing his greed. Those backslapping executives in the NCAA’s ivory tower today think they did a good and noble thing by blowing up one of the few purely special things we had left.
Expanding the NCAA Tournaments to 76 teams isn’t good and it sure as heck isn’t right. It’s someone handing you a lukewarm O’Douls after the yard is cut, a hanging 10-pin in the ninth frame, lipping one out and having to shell out to your pal, and witnessing Armando Galarraga getting jobbed out of his perfecto.
March Madness, meet March Sadness. RIP what was the very best of us… the beloved NCAA Tournament.
An APSE national award-winning writer and editor, David Wasson has almost four decades of experience in the print journalism business in Florida and Alabama. His work has also appeared in The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Los Angeles Times and several national magazines and websites. His Twitter handle: @JustDWasson.
