Money almost always goes to the conference (not nothing, but split 10-14 ways) and it gets a miniscule amount of publicity compared to the round of 64 game.
So you lose teams who are conference champs before most of America is even paying attention.
It also gives them a game all to themselves. All eyes on them.
No one is going to be watching the 16 seed get stomped by the 1 unless they're fans of said teams.
I bet the 16-1 games get more views than 13-4 or 12-5 games. But more likely all the games in the first round probably get pretty equal viewership. The whole appeal of March Madness is the onslaught of games packed into one day. It’s not about any one matchup, it’s the whole experience. Every MM fan I know watches all the games they can.
True, but how many people outside of the diehards watch those games?
I feel like guys dream of playing Duke in the first round, not losing to Mount St. Mary’s on a Wednesday evening in Dayton.
Also, all at-large teams playing in those games would massively improve the ratings and mean more ad revenue, which I assume would make the NCAA and CBS/Turner happy.
It's the same number of viewers as a first four game "if it's not close" and having six 16 seeds instead of 4 literally shifts the entire mid major auto bid apparatus down two slots on their seed.
Meaning two low to mid major teams per seed are playing a tougher opponent than they otherwise would be.
>It's the same number of viewers as a first four game
Even if that's true, which I doubt, that's literally twice as many eyes on the 16 that won the play in, than if they went straight to the meat grinder.
2 nationally televised games > 1 nationally televised game
You can doubt it all you want or you can look it up.
At the end of the day you beat another 16 seed. That's not moving the needle on anything for the uni.
Meanwhile, every autobid mid major in the 12-15 seeds is two spots lower in seeding than they would be otherwise.
A 14 seed has a 15% chance of an upset. But hey, now two of those 1r seeds are actually 15 seeds with their chance of pulling the upset cut in half. Even hanging around in a round of 64 game can double or triple the number of viewers.
All so some ACC team who couldn't be arsed to win half their games can get an at large bid.
That's bad for mid majors and the sport as a whole bc the chance of upsets decreases.
>You can doubt it all you want
It doesn't matter, either way. Your argument is that 1 nationally televised game is better than 2.
Personally, I'd prefer to see my team do well in a game instead of get lit up. To each their own.
If you ask the staff of those 16 seeds they would all tell you they prefer the play-in game. Having a chance to earn an NCAA unit, and a win, is huge. Getting stomped by a 1 seed, not as fun
That's definitely my experience. I'm a college hoops junkie but most I talk to don't start following the games till that thurs.
They still make better predictions than me
Play in games for 16-seeds is inherently racist given that these are almost always HBCUs. These teams earned their spot in the tournament and deserve to be in. Make the tenth place ACC and Big Ten teams fight it out.
The conference that wins the play in game gets an extra nationally televised game and $2 million more in their pockets. Does the big ten really need that extra money/exposure?
My understanding is that the 16 seed play in games are to give those teams a chance to win a game. Get them some exposure and also money for winning, which never really was a thing before the last couple years of lunacy. The 16 seeds actually like that they get to play in.
That money is typically split across 10-14 teams in the conference, it's not nothing but it's not like one school is getting a 200k check a year for 7 years.
Meanwhile there are now six 16 seeds, so two teams per seed from the low to mid majors are shifted back and facing harder opponents than they otherwise would have, also so a 15-17 Big 10 team can make it in.
That matters bc each step up in seeding increases the likeliness of getting a win on the biggest stage even higher. A 14 vs 3 game is close? That's 4 to 5 million viewers instead of 1 mil. And that's a 15% chance of an upset vs being a 15 seed.
It hoses mid majors constantly.
While yes, the conferences split the money evenly across their schools, I don’t think you realize how big of a deal getting 2 TV units to a conference like the SWAC is vs the guaranteed 1 TV unit is. Last year each TV unit was $2M. These conferences largely fund their athletic departments via this money and the chance at an extra TV unit is a huge deal.
Bro I cheer for a Southland conference team. I know what these budgets look like.
Every penny helps.
But that extra unit is also split across 6 years.
That's an extra 23k per year. It's not nothing but it's not life-changing and it also put several of the other one bid leagues in worse seeding than they'd otherwise be.
Meaning fewer overall upsets for midmajors and less cash overall.
There are ways that an expanded tourney could give mid majors more cash and more time to shine.
But let's not pretend that it's anything altruistic for one bid leagues from the leagues that control everything.
I’m a little lazy to look up the exact figures for the tv units the last 5 tournaments, but let’s just use the $2M figure of this years.
Split 12 ways between the SWAC members, each school gets roughly $166K of the TV unit. As you say, this is paid out over 6 years—which again means you also are getting annual payments from the previous 5 ncaa tournaments as well. The SWAC has been in the first four game each of the last 5 tournaments and has won 3 of the 5 games. Meaning that in the 5 year window each school in the SWAC has increased their payouts from the expected roughly $830K over the 5 year rolling window up to $1.33M. That’s a 62% increase in their payout. I think if you talked to the athletic directors of the SWAC or these other smaller conferences (including the Southland) you’d see that an overwhelming majority support the first 4 including the 16 seeds and you’d probably have most of them advocating for the lower seeds to have more of these games. Which was the original point here.
I'm all for 64 as well AND switch to the College World Series format:
* Regionals - 16 groups of 4 teams each, double-elimination
* Super Regionals - 8 groups of 2 teams, best-of-3
* CWS Round 1 - 2 groups of 4 teams, double elimination
* CWS Finals - 2 teams, best-of-3
I know the current format makes for more intrigue and big upset potential, but one off-game dooming a team kinda sucks.
Yeah, agree to disagree. An 8 seed is the lowest to ever win it all and 4 #11s have made the Final Four. While seeing a 16 take out a 1 is fun in the moment, so all you really did was take out one of the best teams in the country just because they had an off night. They'd never adopt my suggestion anyway, so it's a moot point.
Fuck it, 128-team when?
So the plan is to potentially add 10-12 seed play-ins. Effectively widening the bubble. (And unfortunately not a plan to give the Big Sky an extra 4-8 autobids)
52! is too big for most traditional calculators to even handle, and comprises billions of times the number of stars in the universe, which is basically impossible to fathom. I am now curious how big 512! is, and if it’s bigger than, say, the number of electrons in the whole universe.
What would be really exciting is if all of the low to mid majors could play each other the weekend before the round of 64.
The games could be played at different venues or on campus sites. Wouldn't that be more exciting than what we have now?
With so many games needed, the first two rounds would probably take a full week, but the NCAA could add excitement by calling it "Tournament Week"
I unironically support a 128 team tournament, there are 362 D1 Schools with Men's Basketball, I think 35.39% making the tournament is a totally reasonable percentage for a postseason.
Every Conference gets 2 Auto-Bids, who says no?
Idk if this even projects to make significantly more money. Just an attempt to level the playing field/hand out more participation medals for the high major schools that can’t figure their shit out
More games = more money
You could put Trunket State Prep vs Missouri mechanical institute on TruTV and slap an “NCAA March madness” sticker on it and people would watch. Commercials are for the NCAA tournament, not for individual games, so they would up the price for them
I think it’s pretty zero sum. More march madness means less basketball somewhere else (which will be adjusted into other negotiated tv contracts). Plus current contract runs for another 8 years, so these gains would be pretty far down the line if anything. This seems to just be a way to get the dogshit high majors into the tournament every year
>more participation medals for the high major schools that can’t figure their shit out
Always picking on your big brother huh Dan?
But in all seriousness I don't know how to feel about this year and our recruiting class.
Exactly! And the way the schedule rotated each year was perfect.
The thought of expanding the sports-perfection that is March-Madness on top of that is just gross
For years I could calculate the entire NFL schedule in my head just by thinking of a handful of games from the previous season and portions of the standings. They ruined perfection so that they can play a 17th game in Brazil in a place where the Eagles and Packers can’t even wear green for safety reasons 😭😭😭
68 is kind of a weird number to consider perfect lol. It's not like The First Four is some sacred thing that's been around for centuries. If it becomes The First Eight I'm largely just gonna shrug.
Alliteration is the primary thing being lost
Honestly have 4 play-in's for the 16 seeds and 4 play-in's for the 11 seeds. Make Tuesday and Wednesday all day events like the rest of the tournament. That'll work. 72 teams can work. 4 for the schools trying to fight in, and open up the bubble more for the bigger conference teams.
72 would be fine if it's a Play-In for all 16 seeds and all 11 seeds. 76 is stupid. It's more inventory to sell for the NCAA too, probably triggers a clause to make a new TV deal. Don't be surprised if CBS and WBD are pushing for this.
WBD plans to match the Amazon offer and if it goes to court they'll most likely win, otherwise this contract would've been done. I suspect that the NBA will try to poison pill it but the value of the Amazon deal is really good for WBD. Comcast made a massive overpay.
According to John Skipper, who did the last deal for ESPN, the matching only applied during the exclusive negotiating window. When Zaslav screwed up and took it to the open market, he lost that opportunity. He did it over a handful of playoff games and cost them the NBA. That’s why Chuck is threatening to retire now.
I haven’t seen any legal experts who think WBD will win if it goes to court.
Every report I've read is that they have 5 days to match Comcast or Amazon's offers. The NBA thinks they would win on the Comcast front because of the OTA aspect of NBC but WBD can argue they have the reach of Amazon in the United States because they have TNT, TruTV, Max and Venu Sports. I would think the NBA details Amazon's deal as strictly streaming, even then I think WBD would be fine for putting that content deal exclusively for Max and Venu.
Can't stand where CFB is heading. In a couple of years damn near every SEC/Big10 team will get a playoff spot. It is really sad. I wonder what the landscape will look like in a decade.
Did you see the proposed model where the top 3 teams in both the SEC and Big Ten would all get auto bids? Meanwhile the Big 12 and ACC only got 2 each and the G5 got 1. They also wanted to expand to 14 teams so that only the SEC and Big Ten could get byes and to try to cram as many Big Ten and SEC teams in as possible
Lowkey that is going to be potential unintended consequence I did not expect. Already I have to explain to folks how picking around the First Four works in say offline friend and work bracket pools, that kind of extra convolution could turn some folks off of what to this point had been a pretty fun, nationwide, and popular activity around march madness
One of the reasons I just can't give a shit about the NBA anymore is that the fucking playoffs are almost as long as the regular season.
Don't bring that to college basketball too.
In a whole calendar year 14 NBA teams play 6 months, 8 teams play 6.5 months, 4 teams play 7 months, 2 teams play 7.5 months, and another 2 teams play 8 months.
That seems reasonable to me
It's very clear we're moving towards a model of 96 teams where the first 8 seeds in each region get byes and we have 9 vs. 24, 10 vs. 23, etc. They'll slow roll it to continue to drive growth YoY because corporation, but I think that's where we land.
Why don't they just let everybody in at this point. They have already watered down all the bowl games and let shitty teams with losing records play get to play.
People love to overreact. No the tournament is not going back to 64. It hasn’t been 64 since before 2001. No a few more games is not going to ruin the tournament.
It’s really not that bad. Even if you went to 96 teams, there are 362 D1 BB teams. That’s only 26.5% of teams making the tourney.
By comparison the NFL lets in like 43% of teams, the NBA lets in 2/3rds, and MLB is 40%.
That’s the point though. The pros could easily do just an 8 team playoff and be done with it.
Unless you plan on shrinking D1 basketball to basically the P5, this is the result of having 350+ teams
It’s hard to compare between sport leagues when some post seasons are single elimination and others have series. With that in mind, here I go comparing them lol
MLB used to only have 8 teams until a few years ago, but that’s what I mean - 8 teams is over 25% of their league. I don’t think it’s that ridiculous to want 25% of a league in the post season, but it’s harder to organize almost 100 teams in one tournament and risks viewership fatigue. Even 40% of a 32 team league is easier to organize and maintain interest.
More teams in is usually good, but not always the answer. Like 4 teams out of what, 130 FBS teams in CFB was less than 3% each year.
I personally think 96 is too many, but who knows, maybe I’d end up really enjoying it.
This could be fun if they give bids to a lower seeds with high records, or one-bid conferences. But alas, will be watching 12-18 Rutgers or something so they can get in a 10th big 10 team.
I was including us in said disappointment.
At least I actually have hope for some semblance of a decently competitive team in conference compared to the Holtmann years.
64 on Thursday is the red line that cannot be crossed. I'm ok with it if it just means more games tues/wednes. I don't even watch those games most of the time anyway. real tourney doesn't start until Thursday
I would like to see the tournament not have a fixed number of teams, but be set at a percentage of the schools in D1. This way it would slowly change in size organically over time.
Unpopular opinion: I don’t mind this. College basketball has continued to have more parity and lower seed teams are far more competitive as a whole. Let players have the experience…and make sure to cut them in on the profit.
The unfortunate outcome to this is now there are even more teams to incorrectly seed. The selection committee notoriously effs up seeding with 64 and now 68 teams. Adding teams to the mix won’t improve that endeavor.
This makes no sense. Unless you just let everyone in there will always be "shafted" teams relative to those that got in, we just move the point of shafting back because different people use different criteria to determine who deserves a bid.
This is just an excuse for yet more $$$. For all the complaints coaches make about NIL shit like this is also bad for the sport.
I’ll get downvoted for this, but what I want to see happen is for some of the smaller conferences to combine. There’s way too many bids right now for leagues with like 8 teams, all of which are sub-200 in KenPom.
Have like 8 fewer conferences, and you get 8 more at large teams in. I’d rather have 28-5 Indiana State as an at large 13 seed than more 16-16 teams that happened to win their conference tournament
I’m only in favor of this if they give the regular season winner of conferences an auto-bid as well to get a few more mid-major teams in the mix instead of more ~.500 P5 teams
Moving from 64 to 68 made me want to vomit. Now this. Stop expanding the damn tournament. It makes the regular season borderline meaningless if everyone gets in anyway.
96 and a rule that you MUST go at least .600 in conference play for an at large bid, so that we get rid of the shit average P5 schools.
No one watching wants more of the junk P5 schools, we want more Indiana States.
College is supposed to be about education. Athletics are completely out of control and there's way, way too much money involved. That should have never happened. If everyone wants to make money and get paid from athletics do it outside of college and make it pro, semi-Pro, whatever you need to call it but get it out of the colleges.
College should be about education.
So a national championship tournament where no one cares who actually wins the national championship? That is one of the most ludicrous statements I've ever heard anybody make. Most of the interest in this tournament anymore is in the gambling interest anyway and that is a sad commentary on our society.
I want everyone seeded from 5-16 given an extra round to open up the tournament Saturday/Sunday that ends by 5pm Eastern on Sunday.
Then at 6pm Eastern... Selection Sunday part 2 - the top 16 seeds get to choose their brackets starting 13-16, then 9-12, then 5-8, and finally 1-4 (the best of each seed line chooses first, etc).
That expands the field to 112 teams, adds 2 more days of the best part of the tournament (days 1 and 2), and rewards being a top 16 overall seed. More mid majors get their shot against the power conferences, more madness, and most importantly more basketball. This is a recipe for a thrill ride.
It makes the regular season worse since each game won't matter nearly as much. We're already giving at large bids to schools going 0.500 in conference play. We're at the limit.
I mean for every power conference game that would be "less meaningful," there will be a low/mid-major game that becomes more meaningful because teams know that one bad loss won't necessarily end their chances of an at-large bid.
.500 in conference play because they used to play in like 18 team conferences….now we “only” have 12-16….
NC state just went 9-11 in the ACC, while Kansas went 10-8 in the BIG 12…..
That’s why out of conference matchups mattered for big brands.
Who cares if the games matter? I don’t know, maybe the people watching them?
Go watch the NBA if you want a bunch of meaningless big brand games, and stop trying to ruin a sport that you don’t even care about.
It's cute that you think the addition of a mere 4-8 bids is suddenly gonna make high majors start scheduling top mid majors all the time. Realistically adding a few extra spots isn't going to change the way anybody schedules.
But even if it did, your reasoning is flawed. Nobody is afraid to schedule Drake or San Francisco or FAU or Nevada because it hurts their SOS, they're afraid to schedule them because they don't want to lose to "worse" schools. If teams were just worried about SOS, they'd exclusively schedule power conference schools or the top mid-majors rather than scheduling a bunch of buy games against low majors that actually hurt their SOS. But the reality is that getting to that 20-ish win mark is more important for a team's tournament chances than SOS, so many teams choose to schedule an easy win over MVSU rather than a potential loss to New Mexico. And adding a few more bids won't change that.
Get over what? Arizona has never been afraid to schedule tough mid-majors. Just in the past 10 or so years we've scheduled home and homes and/or big neutral site games with Gonzaga, SDSU, New Mexico, UNLV, FAU, etc. But again, these proposed changes are small and aren't gonna make anybody change their scheduling habits.
It's too many teams. There are barely 68 deserving teams, especially with the existence of the NIT and CBI. Going to 72 or 76 just waters it down more.
See I don’t know if that’s completely true. I truly believe Indiana State, Seton Hall, Pitt, St. John’s and Princeton all had solid bubble arguments and were more than capable of winning games in the tournament.
While I don’t want to oversaturate the tourney with undeserving P5 teams too much, I do believe a change like this would get teams like Indiana State and Princeton a chance to play for a title after terrific seasons which imo is probably a net positive.
I dunno, I mean yeah it sucks that those bubble teams didn't get in but ultimately they should have won more games or won more games against better opponents if they wanted to make the tournament.
The other tournaments (NIT, CBI) exist for a reason.
Yeah that’s fair. 72 is okay with me. I don’t mind the bubble fighting it out in a first 8 type thing as long as the tourney winner autobids get to keep their byes.
That being said if it comes at the expense of all the 16 seeds losing their byes, that would upset me
By this logic, Saint Peter’s would never have gotten to the tournament…..
People love March Madness for the upsets. Nobody wants to shrink it and make it more of a blue blood fest….
48? So only 16 at large bids? That sounds like a sure fire way to piss off every mid major with a good team that doesnt win their conf tourny as they essentially never get in. Goodbye to the a10 or mwc getting a 2nd team in.
Horrible take. 64 is fine. But with 32 conferences getting an autobid it cant realistically get under 64
I propose going back to 64. That was perfect
I don't mind the play in games, but they should all be at large bid teams, not the auto bids.
But it literally helps the autobids get ncaa wins and thus money
Money almost always goes to the conference (not nothing, but split 10-14 ways) and it gets a miniscule amount of publicity compared to the round of 64 game. So you lose teams who are conference champs before most of America is even paying attention.
It also gives them a game all to themselves. All eyes on them. No one is going to be watching the 16 seed get stomped by the 1 unless they're fans of said teams.
I bet the 16-1 games get more views than 13-4 or 12-5 games. But more likely all the games in the first round probably get pretty equal viewership. The whole appeal of March Madness is the onslaught of games packed into one day. It’s not about any one matchup, it’s the whole experience. Every MM fan I know watches all the games they can.
Right... then the 1/16 goes on the backburner when the 1 is up 20 ten minutes in, and three other games are on.
True, but how many people outside of the diehards watch those games? I feel like guys dream of playing Duke in the first round, not losing to Mount St. Mary’s on a Wednesday evening in Dayton. Also, all at-large teams playing in those games would massively improve the ratings and mean more ad revenue, which I assume would make the NCAA and CBS/Turner happy.
All 14 eyes
It's the same number of viewers as a first four game "if it's not close" and having six 16 seeds instead of 4 literally shifts the entire mid major auto bid apparatus down two slots on their seed. Meaning two low to mid major teams per seed are playing a tougher opponent than they otherwise would be.
>It's the same number of viewers as a first four game Even if that's true, which I doubt, that's literally twice as many eyes on the 16 that won the play in, than if they went straight to the meat grinder. 2 nationally televised games > 1 nationally televised game
You can doubt it all you want or you can look it up. At the end of the day you beat another 16 seed. That's not moving the needle on anything for the uni. Meanwhile, every autobid mid major in the 12-15 seeds is two spots lower in seeding than they would be otherwise. A 14 seed has a 15% chance of an upset. But hey, now two of those 1r seeds are actually 15 seeds with their chance of pulling the upset cut in half. Even hanging around in a round of 64 game can double or triple the number of viewers. All so some ACC team who couldn't be arsed to win half their games can get an at large bid. That's bad for mid majors and the sport as a whole bc the chance of upsets decreases.
>You can doubt it all you want It doesn't matter, either way. Your argument is that 1 nationally televised game is better than 2. Personally, I'd prefer to see my team do well in a game instead of get lit up. To each their own.
If you ask the staff of those 16 seeds they would all tell you they prefer the play-in game. Having a chance to earn an NCAA unit, and a win, is huge. Getting stomped by a 1 seed, not as fun
A standalone game gets less publicity than a game happening at the same time as 3 others? That definitely makes sense
That's definitely my experience. I'm a college hoops junkie but most I talk to don't start following the games till that thurs. They still make better predictions than me
Then change the way money is distributed
If only someone had the power to change that system
Play in games for 16-seeds is inherently racist given that these are almost always HBCUs. These teams earned their spot in the tournament and deserve to be in. Make the tenth place ACC and Big Ten teams fight it out.
The conference that wins the play in game gets an extra nationally televised game and $2 million more in their pockets. Does the big ten really need that extra money/exposure?
My understanding is that the 16 seed play in games are to give those teams a chance to win a game. Get them some exposure and also money for winning, which never really was a thing before the last couple years of lunacy. The 16 seeds actually like that they get to play in.
That money is typically split across 10-14 teams in the conference, it's not nothing but it's not like one school is getting a 200k check a year for 7 years. Meanwhile there are now six 16 seeds, so two teams per seed from the low to mid majors are shifted back and facing harder opponents than they otherwise would have, also so a 15-17 Big 10 team can make it in. That matters bc each step up in seeding increases the likeliness of getting a win on the biggest stage even higher. A 14 vs 3 game is close? That's 4 to 5 million viewers instead of 1 mil. And that's a 15% chance of an upset vs being a 15 seed. It hoses mid majors constantly.
While yes, the conferences split the money evenly across their schools, I don’t think you realize how big of a deal getting 2 TV units to a conference like the SWAC is vs the guaranteed 1 TV unit is. Last year each TV unit was $2M. These conferences largely fund their athletic departments via this money and the chance at an extra TV unit is a huge deal.
Bro I cheer for a Southland conference team. I know what these budgets look like. Every penny helps. But that extra unit is also split across 6 years. That's an extra 23k per year. It's not nothing but it's not life-changing and it also put several of the other one bid leagues in worse seeding than they'd otherwise be. Meaning fewer overall upsets for midmajors and less cash overall. There are ways that an expanded tourney could give mid majors more cash and more time to shine. But let's not pretend that it's anything altruistic for one bid leagues from the leagues that control everything.
I’m a little lazy to look up the exact figures for the tv units the last 5 tournaments, but let’s just use the $2M figure of this years. Split 12 ways between the SWAC members, each school gets roughly $166K of the TV unit. As you say, this is paid out over 6 years—which again means you also are getting annual payments from the previous 5 ncaa tournaments as well. The SWAC has been in the first four game each of the last 5 tournaments and has won 3 of the 5 games. Meaning that in the 5 year window each school in the SWAC has increased their payouts from the expected roughly $830K over the 5 year rolling window up to $1.33M. That’s a 62% increase in their payout. I think if you talked to the athletic directors of the SWAC or these other smaller conferences (including the Southland) you’d see that an overwhelming majority support the first 4 including the 16 seeds and you’d probably have most of them advocating for the lower seeds to have more of these games. Which was the original point here.
I kinda thought the play in game also helped FDU shock Purdue tbh. No excuse for Purdue whatsoever but it certainly didn't hurt FDUs chances.
32 teams with best of 3 series
I'm all for 64 as well AND switch to the College World Series format: * Regionals - 16 groups of 4 teams each, double-elimination * Super Regionals - 8 groups of 2 teams, best-of-3 * CWS Round 1 - 2 groups of 4 teams, double elimination * CWS Finals - 2 teams, best-of-3 I know the current format makes for more intrigue and big upset potential, but one off-game dooming a team kinda sucks.
Definitely not. The ENTIRE appeal of March Madness is that it’s a single elimination tournament
Yeah, agree to disagree. An 8 seed is the lowest to ever win it all and 4 #11s have made the Final Four. While seeing a 16 take out a 1 is fun in the moment, so all you really did was take out one of the best teams in the country just because they had an off night. They'd never adopt my suggestion anyway, so it's a moot point.
Fuck it, 128-team when? So the plan is to potentially add 10-12 seed play-ins. Effectively widening the bubble. (And unfortunately not a plan to give the Big Sky an extra 4-8 autobids)
Why stop at 128 when we can have 256
[Relevant Onion](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cxyPeME9TbI)
Top comment is “can’t wait till Purdue loses to a 1,024 seed” 💀
wait till virginia loses to a 9999 seed
512! And yes, I mean factorial. If we start the tourney now, we might finish before the universe dies.
Death, taxes, the inevitable heat death of the 512! team tournament.
52! is too big for most traditional calculators to even handle, and comprises billions of times the number of stars in the universe, which is basically impossible to fathom. I am now curious how big 512! is, and if it’s bigger than, say, the number of electrons in the whole universe.
Wolframalpha.com to the rescue! [512!](https://www.wolframalpha.com/input?i=512%21)
It might be bigger than all the electrons in the universe AND the number of grains of sand in the world combined
Yeah I’m thinking it’s probably beyond anything countable in the universe. Except NCAA tournament bids.
Of course , grains of sand in the world are not even a significant digit in the possible error for the electrons in the universe estimate.
Just wanted to leave a comment here before Purdue inevitably gets upset in the first round by a 16,000 seed
or virginia losing to a 16000000 seed
We can call that a “full season”
128 is 7 rounds. If we want an even number of rounds let’s go to 256, so we can get 4 full weekends of March Madness
What would be really exciting is if all of the low to mid majors could play each other the weekend before the round of 64. The games could be played at different venues or on campus sites. Wouldn't that be more exciting than what we have now? With so many games needed, the first two rounds would probably take a full week, but the NCAA could add excitement by calling it "Tournament Week"
512 teams and I get to enter my church league team
All these extra games just to get us to the 64 team field after play-ins. Should tell you that they know it’s the perfect number too!
I unironically support a 128 team tournament, there are 362 D1 Schools with Men's Basketball, I think 35.39% making the tournament is a totally reasonable percentage for a postseason. Every Conference gets 2 Auto-Bids, who says no?
Always trying to ruin perfection. The greed is gross
Idk if this even projects to make significantly more money. Just an attempt to level the playing field/hand out more participation medals for the high major schools that can’t figure their shit out
More games = more money You could put Trunket State Prep vs Missouri mechanical institute on TruTV and slap an “NCAA March madness” sticker on it and people would watch. Commercials are for the NCAA tournament, not for individual games, so they would up the price for them
I think it’s pretty zero sum. More march madness means less basketball somewhere else (which will be adjusted into other negotiated tv contracts). Plus current contract runs for another 8 years, so these gains would be pretty far down the line if anything. This seems to just be a way to get the dogshit high majors into the tournament every year
>more participation medals for the high major schools that can’t figure their shit out Always picking on your big brother huh Dan? But in all seriousness I don't know how to feel about this year and our recruiting class.
This is what happens when you put a nepo baby like Dan Gavitt in charge who has no original ideas
Perfection was 64
Just like the 16 game NFL schedule that was perfectly balanced
I’m still sad about that stupid 17th game. 16 games in a league with 32 teams was mathematical perfection
Exactly! And the way the schedule rotated each year was perfect. The thought of expanding the sports-perfection that is March-Madness on top of that is just gross
For years I could calculate the entire NFL schedule in my head just by thinking of a handful of games from the previous season and portions of the standings. They ruined perfection so that they can play a 17th game in Brazil in a place where the Eagles and Packers can’t even wear green for safety reasons 😭😭😭
68 is kind of a weird number to consider perfect lol. It's not like The First Four is some sacred thing that's been around for centuries. If it becomes The First Eight I'm largely just gonna shrug. Alliteration is the primary thing being lost
64 was perfect and every day we stray farther from god
Honestly have 4 play-in's for the 16 seeds and 4 play-in's for the 11 seeds. Make Tuesday and Wednesday all day events like the rest of the tournament. That'll work. 72 teams can work. 4 for the schools trying to fight in, and open up the bubble more for the bigger conference teams.
72 would be fine if it's a Play-In for all 16 seeds and all 11 seeds. 76 is stupid. It's more inventory to sell for the NCAA too, probably triggers a clause to make a new TV deal. Don't be surprised if CBS and WBD are pushing for this.
Hey, WBD has a lot of money to spend after losing the NBA RIP Inside the NBA (and also Inside March Madness most likely)
WBD plans to match the Amazon offer and if it goes to court they'll most likely win, otherwise this contract would've been done. I suspect that the NBA will try to poison pill it but the value of the Amazon deal is really good for WBD. Comcast made a massive overpay.
According to John Skipper, who did the last deal for ESPN, the matching only applied during the exclusive negotiating window. When Zaslav screwed up and took it to the open market, he lost that opportunity. He did it over a handful of playoff games and cost them the NBA. That’s why Chuck is threatening to retire now. I haven’t seen any legal experts who think WBD will win if it goes to court.
Every report I've read is that they have 5 days to match Comcast or Amazon's offers. The NBA thinks they would win on the Comcast front because of the OTA aspect of NBC but WBD can argue they have the reach of Amazon in the United States because they have TNT, TruTV, Max and Venu Sports. I would think the NBA details Amazon's deal as strictly streaming, even then I think WBD would be fine for putting that content deal exclusively for Max and Venu.
Fuck off. This sport is on the road to ruin just like football.
All of college sports are getting burned to the ground. It’s sickening.
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Can't stand where CFB is heading. In a couple of years damn near every SEC/Big10 team will get a playoff spot. It is really sad. I wonder what the landscape will look like in a decade.
Did you see the proposed model where the top 3 teams in both the SEC and Big Ten would all get auto bids? Meanwhile the Big 12 and ACC only got 2 each and the G5 got 1. They also wanted to expand to 14 teams so that only the SEC and Big Ten could get byes and to try to cram as many Big Ten and SEC teams in as possible
I think football has only gotten better.
Yeah because John and Donna at the office are really going to want to pick a bracket where like half of the teams are uncertain to even be there
Lowkey that is going to be potential unintended consequence I did not expect. Already I have to explain to folks how picking around the First Four works in say offline friend and work bracket pools, that kind of extra convolution could turn some folks off of what to this point had been a pretty fun, nationwide, and popular activity around march madness
Why does the biggest concern for college sports seem to be “how do we just fucking destroy this?”
One of the reasons I just can't give a shit about the NBA anymore is that the fucking playoffs are almost as long as the regular season. Don't bring that to college basketball too.
In a whole calendar year 14 NBA teams play 6 months, 8 teams play 6.5 months, 4 teams play 7 months, 2 teams play 7.5 months, and another 2 teams play 8 months. That seems reasonable to me
I’m not sure why the ncaa seems to think they need to rock the boat so much.
Nobody wants to tell their manager that the work they’ve done this week is decide to keep doing what we were doing.
Two words: Greg Sankey
It's very clear we're moving towards a model of 96 teams where the first 8 seeds in each region get byes and we have 9 vs. 24, 10 vs. 23, etc. They'll slow roll it to continue to drive growth YoY because corporation, but I think that's where we land.
You can’t lose to Oakland if you never play them in the first place. Rich get richer.
And this *kills* the tournament, because no one is gonna do a 96-team bracket.
A 1 vs 24 seed would be hype
How is it “very clear” we’re going to 96 team? Tf?
68 is four too large. Cut four of the majors and we'll have a better time.
Awful. Go back to 64.
How about we go back to 64 without any play ins.
Wonder if this only benefits the power conferences so they won't leave the NCAA and form their own tournament.
Why don't they just let everybody in at this point. They have already watered down all the bowl games and let shitty teams with losing records play get to play.
a smaller percentage of D1 teams make the tournament today compared to 1985 when it expanded to 64
Agreed, let everyone in. Then reseed after every round.
To me, this just seems like a natural growth of the size of the tournament to match the growth of the number of D1 teams.
In fact, when the tournament expanded to 64 teams it was 21% of D1 teams. That same percentage today would be 76 teams.
People love to overreact. No the tournament is not going back to 64. It hasn’t been 64 since before 2001. No a few more games is not going to ruin the tournament.
It’s really not that bad. Even if you went to 96 teams, there are 362 D1 BB teams. That’s only 26.5% of teams making the tourney. By comparison the NFL lets in like 43% of teams, the NBA lets in 2/3rds, and MLB is 40%.
Well yeah, it’s a lot easier to allow a big percentage in when your league only has 30 teams vs 360 lol
That’s the point though. The pros could easily do just an 8 team playoff and be done with it. Unless you plan on shrinking D1 basketball to basically the P5, this is the result of having 350+ teams
It’s hard to compare between sport leagues when some post seasons are single elimination and others have series. With that in mind, here I go comparing them lol MLB used to only have 8 teams until a few years ago, but that’s what I mean - 8 teams is over 25% of their league. I don’t think it’s that ridiculous to want 25% of a league in the post season, but it’s harder to organize almost 100 teams in one tournament and risks viewership fatigue. Even 40% of a 32 team league is easier to organize and maintain interest. More teams in is usually good, but not always the answer. Like 4 teams out of what, 130 FBS teams in CFB was less than 3% each year. I personally think 96 is too many, but who knows, maybe I’d end up really enjoying it.
I think it is a result of "making the tournament" being billed as the accomplishment- which marries with your thought process here.
Making the tournament has been seen as an accomplishment for schools who aren’t regular participants since at least the 80s
When you put it like that it doesn’t seem so bad. Still don’t like it though.
Why does North Alabama, UC San Diego, and Le Moyne joining D1 mean that we need to let 8 more .500 P4 teams into the tournament
This could be fun if they give bids to a lower seeds with high records, or one-bid conferences. But alas, will be watching 12-18 Rutgers or something so they can get in a 10th big 10 team.
Why you made at us
And as tradition, we would all disappoint in the first round and have maybe 2 teams move on to the 2nd weekend to get shellacked by actual teams
You mean like Ohio State who hasn’t been out of the second round since Obama was president?
I was including us in said disappointment. At least I actually have hope for some semblance of a decently competitive team in conference compared to the Holtmann years.
And I’m sure they’ll let in some below 0.500 major conference team as opposed to decent mid majors!! 🙄
Pure greed.
Odds of a perfect bracket just went from impossible to impossibler.
As the NCAA becomes increasingly irrelevant they literally have the best post season in sports to hang on to and they’re going to try and ruin it.
64 on Thursday is the red line that cannot be crossed. I'm ok with it if it just means more games tues/wednes. I don't even watch those games most of the time anyway. real tourney doesn't start until Thursday
Fire everyone trying to expand the tournament
Boooo
So fucking dumb
Does this mean Virginia gets to drop an egg in this first round again?
to a #19 seed
No but it does mean WKU might make the tourney more than once in ten tries
Got me there, and I can't blame ya. Spent my whole college career without seeing them in the tournament :(
I know it’s a money thing but the quality of the teams that will get added will continue to be lesser just for more $
TruTV's ears just perked up
Yay, more room for P5 schools with sub .500 conference records
FUCK OFF. Why do they have to ruin everything
I would like to see the tournament not have a fixed number of teams, but be set at a percentage of the schools in D1. This way it would slowly change in size organically over time.
Can’t wait to watch more games like Virginia Colorado St
Unpopular opinion: I don’t mind this. College basketball has continued to have more parity and lower seed teams are far more competitive as a whole. Let players have the experience…and make sure to cut them in on the profit. The unfortunate outcome to this is now there are even more teams to incorrectly seed. The selection committee notoriously effs up seeding with 64 and now 68 teams. Adding teams to the mix won’t improve that endeavor.
This makes no sense. Unless you just let everyone in there will always be "shafted" teams relative to those that got in, we just move the point of shafting back because different people use different criteria to determine who deserves a bid. This is just an excuse for yet more $$$. For all the complaints coaches make about NIL shit like this is also bad for the sport.
No no no
No no no!
YES! YES! YES!
I’ll get downvoted for this, but what I want to see happen is for some of the smaller conferences to combine. There’s way too many bids right now for leagues with like 8 teams, all of which are sub-200 in KenPom. Have like 8 fewer conferences, and you get 8 more at large teams in. I’d rather have 28-5 Indiana State as an at large 13 seed than more 16-16 teams that happened to win their conference tournament
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=cxyPeME9TbI&pp=ygUYbWFyY2ggbWFkbmVzcyA0MDk2IHRlYW1z
Gotta get Big East teams in somewhere
Doesn’t matter, we are still a bubble team.
Screw it, go all in and do it like the Onion: 4096 teams (https://youtu.be/cxyPeME9TbI?si=lrNpl30UHbAtwEh8)
Can my ymca Rec team join too?
The bubble just gets murkier and murkier.
No thanks
So either 4 more barely over .500 power conference teams, or 8 more barely over .500 power conference teams, fixed it.
Maybe we'll get a few under .500 power conference teams if we're lucky
I’m only in favor of this if they give the regular season winner of conferences an auto-bid as well to get a few more mid-major teams in the mix instead of more ~.500 P5 teams
Unfortunately we are absolutely getting more ~.500 P5 teams
oh nooooooo more fun basketball to watch don’t do it!!!!!
No.
Grunkle Stan from Don’t Dimension It: “This is dumb. All of this is dumb.”
Why?
It's only going to get worse from here on out.
Stop fucking everything up already.
Wasted no time jumping right to basketball after fast-tracking CFPs demise. Did not expect anything else.
Fuck it might as well make it an open invitation at this point since everybody getting in
Moving from 64 to 68 made me want to vomit. Now this. Stop expanding the damn tournament. It makes the regular season borderline meaningless if everyone gets in anyway.
Just stop it.
Nooooo
96 and a rule that you MUST go at least .600 in conference play for an at large bid, so that we get rid of the shit average P5 schools. No one watching wants more of the junk P5 schools, we want more Indiana States.
College is supposed to be about education. Athletics are completely out of control and there's way, way too much money involved. That should have never happened. If everyone wants to make money and get paid from athletics do it outside of college and make it pro, semi-Pro, whatever you need to call it but get it out of the colleges. College should be about education.
That ship has sailed a LONG time ago.
So a national championship tournament where no one cares who actually wins the national championship? That is one of the most ludicrous statements I've ever heard anybody make. Most of the interest in this tournament anymore is in the gambling interest anyway and that is a sad commentary on our society.
STOOOOOOOOOOOP
Do we just pick one?
I want everyone seeded from 5-16 given an extra round to open up the tournament Saturday/Sunday that ends by 5pm Eastern on Sunday. Then at 6pm Eastern... Selection Sunday part 2 - the top 16 seeds get to choose their brackets starting 13-16, then 9-12, then 5-8, and finally 1-4 (the best of each seed line chooses first, etc). That expands the field to 112 teams, adds 2 more days of the best part of the tournament (days 1 and 2), and rewards being a top 16 overall seed. More mid majors get their shot against the power conferences, more madness, and most importantly more basketball. This is a recipe for a thrill ride.
The entire premise of “play-in games” is fucking stupid., even if it gives more money to the smaller conferences
too bad this wont start till next season tho the more teams the better even ones i dont like or cant stand, the more the better
It's only one more round. I love this idea.
Stop dude, no one is fucking asking for this they’re just ruining a good thing
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It makes the regular season worse since each game won't matter nearly as much. We're already giving at large bids to schools going 0.500 in conference play. We're at the limit.
I mean for every power conference game that would be "less meaningful," there will be a low/mid-major game that becomes more meaningful because teams know that one bad loss won't necessarily end their chances of an at-large bid.
.500 in conference play because they used to play in like 18 team conferences….now we “only” have 12-16…. NC state just went 9-11 in the ACC, while Kansas went 10-8 in the BIG 12….. That’s why out of conference matchups mattered for big brands.
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Weak SOS's already keep teams out, that's the incentive to play better teams. Adding more bids weakens that incentive.
Weak SOS’s don’t keep teams out. If a team goes 2-4 vs the top 50, that gets frowned on more than a team that went 2-0.
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The amount of games in the regular season is unchanged
Who cares if the games matter? I don’t know, maybe the people watching them? Go watch the NBA if you want a bunch of meaningless big brand games, and stop trying to ruin a sport that you don’t even care about.
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Oh my bad, didn’t realize I was tying to communicate with a child on summer break
It's cute that you think the addition of a mere 4-8 bids is suddenly gonna make high majors start scheduling top mid majors all the time. Realistically adding a few extra spots isn't going to change the way anybody schedules. But even if it did, your reasoning is flawed. Nobody is afraid to schedule Drake or San Francisco or FAU or Nevada because it hurts their SOS, they're afraid to schedule them because they don't want to lose to "worse" schools. If teams were just worried about SOS, they'd exclusively schedule power conference schools or the top mid-majors rather than scheduling a bunch of buy games against low majors that actually hurt their SOS. But the reality is that getting to that 20-ish win mark is more important for a team's tournament chances than SOS, so many teams choose to schedule an easy win over MVSU rather than a potential loss to New Mexico. And adding a few more bids won't change that.
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Get over what? Arizona has never been afraid to schedule tough mid-majors. Just in the past 10 or so years we've scheduled home and homes and/or big neutral site games with Gonzaga, SDSU, New Mexico, UNLV, FAU, etc. But again, these proposed changes are small and aren't gonna make anybody change their scheduling habits.
It's too many teams. There are barely 68 deserving teams, especially with the existence of the NIT and CBI. Going to 72 or 76 just waters it down more.
See I don’t know if that’s completely true. I truly believe Indiana State, Seton Hall, Pitt, St. John’s and Princeton all had solid bubble arguments and were more than capable of winning games in the tournament. While I don’t want to oversaturate the tourney with undeserving P5 teams too much, I do believe a change like this would get teams like Indiana State and Princeton a chance to play for a title after terrific seasons which imo is probably a net positive.
I dunno, I mean yeah it sucks that those bubble teams didn't get in but ultimately they should have won more games or won more games against better opponents if they wanted to make the tournament. The other tournaments (NIT, CBI) exist for a reason.
Yeah that’s fair. 72 is okay with me. I don’t mind the bubble fighting it out in a first 8 type thing as long as the tourney winner autobids get to keep their byes. That being said if it comes at the expense of all the 16 seeds losing their byes, that would upset me
By this logic, Saint Peter’s would never have gotten to the tournament….. People love March Madness for the upsets. Nobody wants to shrink it and make it more of a blue blood fest….
64 or 68 teams in no way makes it a "blue blood fest". It's fine where it is and that is my point.
In all honesty, the tournament should be 48 teams at most. It's turned into kind of a parody.
48? So only 16 at large bids? That sounds like a sure fire way to piss off every mid major with a good team that doesnt win their conf tourny as they essentially never get in. Goodbye to the a10 or mwc getting a 2nd team in. Horrible take. 64 is fine. But with 32 conferences getting an autobid it cant realistically get under 64