Expanding NCAA basketball tournament would make regular season irrelevant (Herndon)

Mike Herndon | By Mike Herndon |
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on February 28, 2012 at 11:28 PM, updated February 29, 2012 at 8:57 AM

billy-donovan-florida-herndon.jpgFlorida coach Billy Donovan is one of several proponents of expanding the NCAA tournament. (Mark Humphrey/Associated Press)

In the march toward a four-team playoff in college football, a common note of caution has been the desire to protect the importance of the regular season.

Apparently, North Carolina athletic director Bubba Cunningham didn't get the memo.

While the powers-that-be in college football search for ways to keep the sport's 12-game regular season vibrant while devising a more legitimate postseason model, Cunningham this week essentially proposed that we chuck college basketball's regular season in the waste bin.

Cunningham told the Raleigh (N.C.) News & Observer recently that he favors an expansion of the NCAA tournament to a field of 128.

He isn't alone. Coaches such as Florida's Billy Donovan and Syracuse's Jim Boeheim also have voiced support for further expansion in a tournament that has gone from 32 teams to 48 to 64 to 68 over the years.

And why wouldn't they? A bigger tournament would command even more TV money, and more bids mean fewer coaches in the unemployment line.

Then again, that's not necessarily so. Postseason berths did nothing for football coaches such as UCLA's Rick Neuheisel, Arizona State's Dennis Erickson, Texas A&M's Mike Sherman and Illinois' Ron Zook, all of whom were fired despite leading their teams to bowl games last fall.

Hence, the proposal to raise the threshold for bowl eligibility to seven wins.

If basketball were to go the other way and bloat its tournament by 60 more teams, college presidents and athletic directors would find other criteria with which to judge their coaches. And what we'll be left with is a watered-down event that would render the regular season worthless.

Take the current situations of Alabama and Mississippi State.

The Crimson Tide has battled back from suspensions to four starters and now seems likely to earn its first NCAA tournament berth since Anthony Grant took over the program in 2009.

The Bulldogs, once solidly in the NCAA tourney picture, are in danger of losing their dance card after five straight losses.

If the field were 128, both would likely already have their tournament tickets punched. The final weeks of the regular season would be irrelevant, as would the SEC tournament -- if there even was one. An expansion of the NCAA tournament could result in the elimination of conference tourneys altogether.

But while an NCAA tournament berth for Alabama this year would be a hard-won reward for its resiliency in recapturing a derailed season, the accomplishment would mean significantly less in a field of 128.

And if MSU can't level its conference record at 8-8, does it deserve to go to the Big Dance?

The NCAA tournament isn't broken. We don't need to be looking for ways to fix it.


His column appears on Wednesdays in the Press-Register.