You Can’t Keep A Bad Idea Down: The NCAA Set To Expand The Tournament

(Photo by Silver Screen Collection/Getty Images) | Getty Images The NCAA has decided to expand the tournament, and to quote Charlton Heston from the Planet of the Apes when he realized he was back on Earth: “We finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you…damn you all to hell!” I

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What is the story about?

The NCAA has decided to expand the tournament, and to quote Charlton Heston from the Planet of the Apes when he realized he was back on Earth: “We finally really did it. You maniacs! You blew it up! Ah, damn you…damn you all to hell!”

In case you weren’t sure, we don’t think it’s a smart idea to expand the tournament. Why mess with something that already works so well?

Take the ACC Tournament. Once upon a time, it was almost impossible to get in, but with 18 teams, games spread over five days instead

of three, it’s just too much. The teams that play on Day One will be tired on Day Three, upsets are far more uncommon, and you might as well come on Thursday or Friday, if your team is still there. Why pay for five days in a hotel for 2-3 days of good basketball?

But they’re clearly going to do it, no matter how stupid it is, so we’ll just have to suck it up and, like in the modern ACC Tournament, get through the crappy games and wait for the good ones. So be it.

The smaller schools will expect to get their share of those bids, but if you had a chance to take, say, Virginia Tech and Auburn, or Marist and Navy, what would you do? And if you think the Power Conferences will put up with those bids going to minor conferences, you’ve got another think coming.

So now, instead of Dayton hosting the First Four, there will be 24 teams in 12 play-in games in two cities. We can call one the Herb Sendek Invitational, and the other the Seth Greenberg Invitational.

If they’re going to do this, they might as well do it right. The second site has to be a basketball city, one where there is minimal competition from other sports, and where the tournament will be the focus. There are probably a lot of cities that could handle it, but one really stands out: Albuquerque.

The city loves New Mexico basketball, it has hosted the tournament in the past, including NC State’s dramatic 1983 championship, and the Pit is an incredible environment. The city is big enough to host the crowds the second-rate games will hopefully draw.

You hope for the best, but honestly, like the ACC Tournament, this will just water things down, and people will just wait for the real games to start on Thursday. TV will figure out ways to tinker with the ratings, but that probably will just annoy people in different ways.