March Madness

Southlandish here. Following up on The Iconic Midwesterner's lament about this year's tourney, I've been thinking about a new tournament format. I have a little time to kill before by Illini tip-off on the way to their early exit.

I wish the NCAA would just take the FA Cup (English Football) approach and say everyone is in. There are 336 Division I schools, I think. You add three more rounds to the tourney. Get rid of those silly damned conference tourneys, which pervert everything by making the winner the automatic bid and shortening the regular season conference schedules. There is no excuse for Big Ten teams not to play each conference member home and away, which leads to some of the bitching about the strength of schedule come seeding time.

You give 176 teams bids into the first full bracket round of 256 and the other 160 bottom-feeders have a one round play in game to fill in the balance of 80 spots. Then you play out eight rounds. Every year you are going to end up with some REAL Cinderella stories. Really shitty teams who win four games and make the round of 32. All the Majors have all their teams in so they should be happy and they should all easily win their first two or three games before running into the big boys.

Sure there is still going to be bitching about seeds but the bottom line is that everyone is ultimately in control of their own destiny and no legitimate top 50 team is going to play anyone but cupcakes for their first three games. If you're Illinois and you lose your second game to 10-20 LaSalle, you earned your disgrace. Stop whining.

It would be one helluva tournament and truly MARCH Madness because Selection Sunday is going to have to be bumped to the first Sunday in March and the three extra games mean that the whole month is going to be about the NCAA Tourney. A month of mania works for the World Cup. I can't believe it wouldn't be the same for the NCAA.

As for the NIT being eliminated, again referring to European football, re-package (and rename it) it as a kind of Champions League that runs through the first half of the next season. There are 32 Division I conferences. Make it a five round tourney of the previous year champs starting early in the season and wrapping up just as the conference schedules start. That would give you seven weeks or so to play it out. Only 8 teams are even going to be playing a third game so it isn't intrusive on team scheduling, especially since we already see large disparities in games played because of scheduling and early season tournaments. I think Indiana played 4 fewer games than Illinois this year. An ESPN could hype the hell out of it. Look what they already do with the Rivalry Weeks.

It's fun to fantasize about this stuff.