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Apparently, we here at Ohio State need to get back to the controversy-making business, because without us to pick on, ESPN is left to run idiotic Outside The Lines shows like the one today:
"Should the tournament be expanded?"
Of course not. (Good attempt at news-making, though.)
There are already 30 or so teams in the tourney who have no chance to win the championship. Why add 30 more?
The regular-season is already diminished by the conference tournaments, but at least those do make sure that every team gets a shot. Win and you're in.
If Polly Anna State can win four games in a row against three other Sisters of The Poor, then they get into the tourney and everyone (except the conference's regular season champ, if that happens to be a different school) is happy for one day until they get crushed by a number one seed.
Then, once in a while those little schools rise up and knock off the big boys, or at least give them a really good scare. This is great drama, great television and great story-making.
To add more games would only diminish this. All you're talking about is adding the second or third or fourth best team in the small conferences and the sixth, seventh and eighth place teams in the power conferences.
This makes no sense when considering that none of them are likely to even make the Final Four and that they already get a fair chance to make it anyway. (One note: technically this does not apply to the Ivy League, because it has no conference tournament. However, because their pious reason for this is to prevent athletics from getting too important at their institutions, I think it is fair to say that they have excepted themselves from this argument.)
Sure, making the NCAA Tournament is a thrill-of-a-lifetime for most players, but is it worth it to diminish that thrill by removing some of the exclusivity?
The argument was made that the tournament has expanded several times in the past and improved each time, but that doesn't fly here.
It was expanded so that every conference wasn't subjected to the problem of the small ones - a good regular-season ruined by a bad conference tournament game.
While it is a shame (and an argument for eliminating the conference tournament) that this eliminates the best team in a conference, it's important to remember that there is virtually no chance that any team from outside the power conferences is going to win the championship. They are being denied a chance to win a game and get some exposure for their school, but the fact remains they could have avoided that by winning when they had to.
The point of the tournament is to pick a national champion, not give everyone 15 minutes of fame (though that is a nice side effect).
As for the big conferences, when only one school from that conference could make it, the result could sometimes mean eliminating a Top 10 team.
If the best 10 teams aren't all in the tournament, there is a problem. If the not every member of the top 40 teams are in, well, I fail to see how problematic that is when considering the ultimate goal of picking the one best team. (No team seeded outside the top 32 has ever won it all. (No. 8 seed Villanova is the highest-seeded team ever to win the championship, in 1985.)
But perhaps the best part of the ESPN show was at the end, when Virginia Tech head coach Seth Greenberg used the example of college football's post-season.
Are you kidding?
Let's take the best post-season in all of sports and compare it to the worst to figure out ways to improve it.
Greenberg's arguments that it is great that for as many kids as possible to reach the post-season.
But is it? Look at the performances (and even comments) of a lot of schools who were not in a BCS game and wonder how excited those teams were to be in the post-season. The over-abundance of bowl games has made reaching them ho-hum or, worse, expected, rather than special. All this does is increase the pressure on coaches to make it, despite the diminished appreciation upon getting there.
Yeah, let's add that to basketball, too.
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