Too Much of A Good Thing Is Never A Good Thing

Welcome back everyone to another exciting edition of Ice Cold Sports part of the Radio Blog Network. First I would like to thank everyone who has followed me in my young career as a blogger. For reposting or retweeting the links, for spreading the word, and for all the great feedback I have received so far. I'd like to send out a special thanks to my dear friend Megan who gets a lot of credit for the birth of this child of mine. She pushed and encouraged me for a long time to get this thing off the ground and is a very large supporter. So Megan I thank you for everything.

I wonder what if I were to thank 96 people. 96 is such a large number. Hell I don't even think I could think of 64 people. I can maybe cover a top 25 but it'd be rough. The point I'm making is simple. The NCAA is discussing and debating whether or not to expand the mens basketball tournament, better known as "March Madness" from 64 teams to 96.



Can you guess how many Division 1A basketball teams there are? Its a rather large number. 347 to be exact. So with the current format of 64 schools getting in, that is roughly 18% of the schools. Which is a low number but having a 64 team tournament seems like a lot already. Say you change it to 96. That ups the anti to 27-28%. So over a quarter of the teams get in. Then you factor in the NIT which face it...would turn into a laughing stock of suck if you invited the 96 best teams then giving the 32 teams that were next in line to play in theirs. So really they are taking those 32 who get in the NIT and letting them play in the big dance. Then you replace them with 32 of the teams ranked in the 100s.

I feel like if they do expand that it will just water down an already large tournament. The tournament famously known as March Madness already spills into April. I'm really curious to see how itd work because if you keep the same regions, you'll have 24 teams in each region. Which doesn't align right here. So you gotta push everything back.

The only true ranking I can use for this cluster of 96 teams is the RPI rankings. For those of you who do not know, the RPI is the Rankings Percentage Index. Which happens to be a more confusing formula to rank how good teams are than the BCS. The simple way of putting it is you take your winning percentage and you add it to your opponents winning percentage and your opponents opponents winning percentage.

WP+OWP+OOWP

It actually gets tougher than that and to a point where it gives me a headache so we are going to keep it simple here. Just remember your three key ingredients. Winning %,opponents winning %, and opponents opponents winning %.

Currently Kansas is #1 in the RPI and of course as of right now they are ranked #1 in the coaches and AP polls. The 64th ranked team in the RPI is South Carolina. And sitting pretty at 96 is Murray State. And yes my reaction is the same as yours. Who the hell is Murray State.



Which this expansion you run into the trouble of teams earning bids who truly don't deserve them. Usually in the current field you have maybe five or six teams who probably should have gotten in but didn't. So now you run into the problem of too many games not being the slightest bit of competitive which will probably piss off fans and advertisers. These games already don't usually sell out till around the sweet sixteen anyways.

So to conclude. I feel like the NCAA tournament is at a good place right now. Simply saying why change the recipe if theres nothing wrong with it. I for one will hope they don't water down what really is one of the greatest events on the sports calender. Plus adding to it makes regular season games mean less, rivalries don't mean as much, and the overall event will be more watered down than a can of PBR fresh off the shelf.



That'll do it for now. And thanks again for all the support and positive feedback I've received. Stay tuned for more later. Your logged onto Ice Cold Sports part of the Radio Blog Network.