Oh, hey! I guess it’s time to think about tournament expansion again...

While visiting Troy Nunes Is An Absolute Magician on an offseason May afternoon, I came across Andrew Pregler’s post centered around a Luke DeCock News-Observer story about several potential changes ACC commissioner John Swofford wants the NCAA to adopt in response to the Rice Commission’s proposals for fixing college basketball. Pregler’s story focuses on the most germane of these for the purposes of this site—NCAA Tournament expansion. And I wanted to expand upon it a bit.

Swofford’s proposal isn’t anything terribly radical. He’s not calling for a move to 96 teams or 128 or 351. Instead, it calls for an expansion of the field by four—from 68 to 72. In other words, the current First Four would be doubled. For the purposes of this post, I’m dubbing this proposal the “First Eight.” The commissioner, per DeCock’s story, suggests setting up a second First Four event, perhaps at a Western site, as the mechanism for expansion. (So much for the idea of having tournament games at the Palestra or Hinkle Fieldhouse. Sigh.)

Update: So why exactly isn’t expansion (to 72 or another number) not crazy?

Expansion kind of makes sense because it would give more teams an opportunity to compete for a championship (or win shares, if we’re being honest) without diluting the product too much or making the regular season much more meaningless. Let me use numbers to explain how.

For starters, we aren’t talking about an NBA or NHL type playoff system where more than half of the teams make the postseason. Going to 72, we aren’t even at the level of MLB or the NFL, where a third or more of the teams advance. Currently, 68 of Division I’s 351 teams reach the tournament, that’s 19.37%. Expanding to by four teams merely boosts that percentage to 20.5%. And when you consider that the Savannah State Tigers are dropping down to Division 2, while the Cal Baptist Lancers and North Alabama Lions are moving up, eventually 72 of 352 Division I teams would qualify, resulting in an ever so slight drop to 20.45%.

And the growth of Division I is an important factor here. As commenter blueman2 mentioned in a comment on the NunesMagician.com post that started this whole thing, tournament expansion hasn’t kept up with Division I expansion. If we were to keep the same qualification percentage from 1985, when the tournament expanded to 64 teams with 282 Division I members, we would have to place nearly 23% of teams in the NCAA field. With 351 D1 teams in 2018, 72 isn’t enough to meet that mark—you’d have to expand the field all the way to 80!

Looking at other Division I men’s sports, men’s basketball sends a relatively low percentage of participating teams to its championship tournament. (Note that I’m not counting volleyball and water polo since their championships may include teams from outside D1.)

• Men’s hockey: 16 spots for 60 teams (26.27%)
• Men’s lacrosse: 17 for 71 (23.9%)
• Men’s soccer: 48 for 203 (23.7%)
• Baseball: 64 for 298 (21.5%)
• FCS football: 24 for 124 (19.35%)
• Men’s basketball: currently 68 for 351 (19.3%), potential 72 for 351 (20.5%)
• FBS football: 4 for 129 (3.1%)

Even with expansion, men’s basketball will still send a lower percentage of teams to its postseason than any other D1-only men’s team sport that’s not football. And that’s with each and every school in the division playing.

Cut to the chase! How would this work?

To give you a semi-realistic example of what a 72-team NCAA Tournament would look like, I took this year’s field of 68 and added the four No. 1 seeds from the NIT (remember, they’re the first four teams left out of the field)—the Notre Dame Fighting Irish, USC Trojans, Baylor Bears, and Saint Mary’s Gaels. This required the re-bracketing of the field from lines 11 on down.

The First Eight games are all in bold. New teams in the field are represented by asterisks, while teams with a down arrow next to their seed number took a drop in seeding.

Note that I adjusted matchups to place teams in a more geographically-convenient fashion based on the updated seed list, so not all First Round matchups remain the same here, even if a team didn’t drop a seed line.

• For simplicity’s sake, I set the bracket up so the First Eight’s at-large games are all matchups for the places on seed 11. This has ripple effects from lines 12 on down, as the two 11s displaced need to go somewhere. Naturally, with several changed matchups, many of the biggest surprises from this March Madness might not have happened. (And on the flip side, other possibilities open up.)
• On the subject of the new games, I paired the four new First Eight teams together, which gives two of them a convenient draw with an Opening Round win. Baylor Bears would advance to a matchup in Dallas against the Miami Hurricanes with a win over Saint Mary’s, while USC could earn a place in the L.A.-based West Region by defeating Notre Dame.
• As a result of the addition of those four new at-larges, this bracket makes the Loyola Chicago Ramblers’ miracle run to the Final Four just a bit more unlikely, as they switch from being the No. 11 seed in a South Region that was blown wide open to the 12 seed in the Villanova Wildcats’ East Region! The Ramblers and San Diego State Aztecs drop into 5 vs. 12 games against the West Virginia Mountaineers and Ohio State Buckeyes, respectively. Note that the New Mexico State Aggies and Davidson Wildcats keep their places as the top two 12s on the seed list.
• The other two 12s, the Murray State Racers and South Dakota State Jackrabbits, aren’t so lucky, as they drop down to line 13. At this point, I needed to do some rearranging of the previously set matchups, thanks to a desire to prevent regular season rematches. Therefore, it’s the Jackrabbits who earn the opportunity to upset the Arizona Wildcats in this alternate universe, not the Buffalo Bulls. The MAC champs get Wichita State Shockers (95-85 winners over the Jackrabbits in December) instead, while Murray State (who hosted the Auburn Tigers during the regular season) takes on the Gonzaga Bulldogs (which would have been a sneaky upset pick) and the UNCG Spartans draw the Tigers.
• The Marshall Thundering Herd’s stunning win over the Shockers also disappears in this scenario, as the C-USA Tournament winners join the CAA champs, the College of Charleston Cougars, in falling from line 13 to 14. Both play third-seeded Big Ten teams in this bracket, with the Herd matching up with the Michigan Wolverines and the Cougars paired with the Michigan State Spartans. The Montana Grizzlies and Bucknell Bison keep their spots, however, but are paired with the Tennessee Volunteers and Texas Tech Red Raiders, in their respective First Round games.
• On line 15, the Lipscomb Bison again challenge the North Carolina Tar Heels, but the other three matchups are all new, thanks to geographic adjustments. The Purdue Boilermakers face the formerly 14th-seeded Wright State Raiders in an all-Midwest matchup in the East, while the Georgia State Panthers, a holdover 15, shift to an all-Southern showdown with the Duke Blue Devils in the Midwest. However, the Cincinnati Bearcats, who got past the Panthers in their round of 64 game, face a far more difficult scenario in this bracket—against the other 14 seed that dropped, the Stephen F. Austin Lumberjacks.
• Finally, all four 16 seed spots feature First Eight matchups. Yes, the Long Island Blackbirds-Radford Highlanders and N.C. Central Eagles-Texas Southern Tigers games are repeated, But the two 16 seeds who earned a direct trip to the First Round, the UMBC Retrievers and Penn Quakers are paired, with the winner earning the chance to do what the America East champs did in reality—knock off the top-seeded Virginia Cavaliers. Finally, the two lowest-ranked 15s, the Cal State Fullerton Titans and Iona Gaels, meet for the right to play the Kansas Jayhawks.

Level with us. This probably means more places for power conference teams, right?

Yes. In this scenario, the only new mid-major in the field is Saint Mary’s, with the ACC, Big 12, and Pac-12 increasing their bid totals as shown below.

Making matters worse for the mids, only one, the Middle Tennessee Blue Raiders, ranked among the NIT’s two and three seeds, and, therefore, among the first eight left out in this scenario.

I think expanding by four more teams, but no further, might add a little more balance to the field. Financially, it might also be a boost to the mid-major conferences as well, as now four of them would be guaranteed a win share with a First Four/Eight victory. Plus, with several teams forced to drop a seed line (from 11 to 12 or 13 to 14), higher seeds could encounter more difficult First Round opposition, which might increase the chances for upsets.

What are your thoughts about this proposal? Too much? Not enough? I know, I know. “Go back to 64 teams and stop messing with the best three weeks in sports.”

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