Madness of March toward expansion worth considering

There's a move afoot to expand the NCAA men's basketball tournament to 96 teams.

Too bad for Roy Williams and his floundering Tar Heels that expansion can't be implemented until 2011.

It could happen that fast if the NCAA opts out of its current broadcast agreement with CBS following the Final Four in order to re format its television deal to include the larger tournament field and split-rights coverage between an over-the-air partner and a cable network.

If TV and more money are involved, chances are very good that the NCAA's new motto will be, "Bigger is better."

In that case, let the complaining begin. College fans in love with the current 65-team tournament are already expressing outrage over the alleged conspiracy to dilute a great event.

That was my first reaction, but I'm trying to remain open-minded. There's a first for everything, right?

Those of us opposed to expansion of the field will argue that it provides undeserving opportunity for too many relatively inferior teams.

This, in turn, will produce too many unattractive match-ups.

And everybody understands the damage a bigger bracket does to the regular season. It makes it even more meaningless.

Besides, why fix what ain't broke?

The sticky problem for dissenters, though, is that these are precisely the same arguments that were used when the tournament expanded from 48 teams to 64 in 1985.

We complained then that the NCAA was inviting riff-raff, and that this would detract from the grandeur of the competition.

Instead, the opposite reaction took place among fans. Office pools grew into a national phenomenon.

Lowly, double-digit seeds were instantly embraced. Today, the highlights of every tournament include mid-majors taking down, or throwing a scare into, marquee teams. People love that, in case you hadn't noticed.

Zealots will tell you that the tournament is the year's grandest sporting event. But they exaggerate.

The first couple days of the tournament create most of the excitement. Interest peaks among casual observers when the plucky underdogs challenge the household names, but anticipation diminishes as the marquee teams move along, asserting their dominance.

A larger field would mean 31 more games over an extra week. The top 32 teams would get byes.

The tournament's configuration would require some adjustments by fans, but people would be left with more hoops - and perhaps more lovable overachievers. Would that really be a turn off?

No, I'm not convinced that 96 is the way to go. But maybe we should resist knee-jerk reactions, especially when some of the outspoken supporters -Syracuse's Jim Boeheim and Duke's Mike Krzyzewski - have nothing to gain by expansion.

Also, by creating a 96-team field, the NCAA could absorb the 32-team NIT, which it also owns. Eliminating the NIT isn't the worst idea.

Krzyzewski is a recent convert to the 96-team concept. A few months ago, he warned against diluting the product, but recently said, "I don't think we put enough value on the regular season. By expanding to that - and not having the NIT - you reward everybody who wins the regular season."

An automatic NCAA bid for the team that finishes first in the standings - in addition to the slot reserved for the conference tournament champion - would be an attractive proposition for mid-major leagues that struggle to get at-large invitations.

"You're rewarding regular-season champs," Krzyzewski says.

This, he notes, can only enhance the attractiveness of mid-major conference games in February's dead zone.

It's a potentially effective rebuttal to objections over a 96-team field.

While I'm not yet a convert, I can recognize another argument: Nothing succeeds like excess.

It's a philosophy that has served big-time athletics very well over the years.

Maybe it will again.

Bob Molinaro, (757) 446-2373, bob.molinaro@pilotonline.com