April 5, 2024 By: Mark Knudson

How to fix March Madness: Start by eliminating conference tournaments and fixing the Play-in games

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Now that we’ve reached the Final Four, all the hand wringing about who got left out and who got seeded where and why is all forgotten.

For now.

Regardless of who wins this year’s National Championship, there will still be calls from folks who want to alter and in most cases, expand the tournament from it’s current 68 teams to 72 or even more than that. These folks certainly don’t care about the prospect of getting too much of a good thing.

There are also a lot of people who want to leave well enough alone.

Can we get oversaturated with college hoops in March?

Perhaps. With conference realignment about to significantly alter the big conferences starting next season, we will soon find out.

But why is all out expansion the only option?

Here’s a better plan: Start by eliminating the useless conference postseason tournaments. Just go ahead and award the regular season conference champ the automatic bid they’ve earned. In the case of the Bloated Big 10 and the oversized SEC, perhaps you have a one-game playoff or something to determine which of the 18 teams is the league champ. (Two nine-team divisions, east and west, would seem to make sense, but they haven’t asked me for my input as of yet.)

With the true conference champs getting the automatic bids, the focus would shift to the at-large field, and which teams are most deserving. That’s the way it is, mostly, right now, but after the so-called “bid stealers” take spots from more deserving teams, we see teams like Indiana State this year get left on the sidelines unfairly.

Which brings us to be biggest “fix” that’s needed. It’s no secret that the “Power” conferences – there will be just four now – want more access (meaning more money of course.) They want to screw the smaller conferences, even though a conference like the Big East is producing the tournament champion (beating a team from the Mountain West last season.) The Power Four absolutely do not deserve any special consideration. In fact, they should be forced to do a little more.

If they powers that be want to expand to 72 – meaning the “First Four” will become the “First Eight” – then make all eight of those teams come form the lower half of the Power Four. Leave the locked in at-large bids just as they are, open for the little guys.

If the lower half Power Four teams believe they are better than the upper half of the big conferences (and we’ve seen A LOT of evidence to the contrary) then they should be willing to prove it by replacing their useless conference tournaments with NCAA tournament
“Play-in” games.

It’s possible to expand the tournament field and still streamline and improve the selection process. This year, Indiana State belonged in the tournament and Virginia didn’t. If you made the lower half teams from the Atlantic Coast Conference (which will include Stanford and California next season. That’s still hard to not laugh at) earn their way into the event, it’s more likely the most deserving teams will end up making the field of 64 and moving on.

That’s what the hoop fans around the country want to see. Not just more…but better.