In a direct quote from Baker, he expressed his desire for expansion the following way:<\/p>\n
\n\u201cIf you have a tournament that\u2019s got 64 or 68 teams in it, you\u2019re going to have a bunch of teams that are probably among what most people would consider to be the best 68 or 70 teams in the country that aren\u2019t going to make the tournament, period. The point behind going from 68 to 72 or 76 is to basically give some of those schools that were probably among the 72, 76, 68, 64 best teams in the country a way into the tournament.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
This makes zero sense to me, as you could erase each of the referenced numbers in the quote above and replace it with whatever number you\u2019d like and the sentiment would still make sense. The goal should never be to get specific teams into the tournament. Making the tournament should be a reward for regular season accomplishments. The argument Baker outlined could hypothetically never be stopped at any given number.<\/p>\n
A team finishing around .500 should never make the NCAA Tournament as an at-large team. Continued expansion of March Madness dilutes the importance of college basketball\u2019s regular season. The NBA is the poster child for a diluted regular season \u2014 NBA teams regularly show minimal effort in the regular season because two-thirds of the league make the playoffs. What\u2019s the point of playing the games at that point?<\/p>\n
March Madness expanded from 64 teams to 68 in 2011. This created the idea of the First Four, which has largely been a flop. There simply isn\u2019t enough purpose to it. The casual fan has a hard time watching two mid-majors play with the opportunity to be blasted into outer space by a No. 1 seed in the next round. Conversely, fans don\u2019t typically enjoy watching two bubble teams play when neither deserved to make the tournament in the first place.<\/p>\n
Michigan has excelled at making the NCAA Tournament in recent memory. Should the tournament continue to expand, that accomplishment would be watered down.<\/p>\n
What are your thoughts on potential tournament expansion? Let us know down in the comments below.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For college hoops junkies, March is a sacred time each and every year. No postseason tournament in the…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":2368,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[44],"tags":[199,1339,1388,3254,3249,3248,204,3251,3252,3250,214,3255,3256,3253,1317,1337,1338,1387,62,67,132,68,3247],"class_list":{"0":"post-2367","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-against","9":"tag-basketball","10":"tag-be","11":"tag-brew","12":"tag-expanding","13":"tag-fans","14":"tag-front-page","15":"tag-madness","16":"tag-maize","17":"tag-march","18":"tag-michigan","19":"tag-michigan-mens-basketball","20":"tag-michigan-mens-basketball-opinion","21":"tag-n","22":"tag-ncaa","23":"tag-ncaa-basketball","24":"tag-ncaabasketball","25":"tag-should","26":"tag-sports","27":"tag-united-states","28":"tag-unitedstates","29":"tag-us","30":"tag-why"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/114721425108576626","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2367"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2367\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2368"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2367"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2367"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2367"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}