NCAA Tournament expansion will probably happen, the only question is where we will watch it

Talk of the NCAA Tournament expanding has been bubbling for months, but on Monday it exploded, as Sports by Brooks quoted a source at ESPN as saying

It's a done deal with the expansion of the tournament. Depending on how soon a (TV) deal is done, the added teams could start next year. The NCAA confirmed that bidders would be interested in 96 teams, so they're going with it.

If you think that is bad, it only gets worse. Sports Business Journal was able to obtain a copy of the Request for Proposal put out by the NCAA. For those with weak stomachs, you may want to avoid the following blockquote.

The NCAA has its sights set on expanding from a 65-team tournament to either 68 or 96 teams if it opts out of the CBS contract, according to the 12-page RFP.

According to SBJ, CBS, Turner Sports, Fox, and ESPN have all shown interest in making a bid for the Tournament's rights. The NCAA has three years left on their current deal with CBS, worth $2.131 billion, but have a clause in their contract that allows them to opt out after this year.

Jeff Goodman was able to catch up with Greg Shaheen, who SBJ names as spearheading the campaign for expansion. Shaheen said all the right things -- "Nothing is a done deal. ... We're talking with parties who have interest. ... We have to look into it, but we don’t even know if we'd do it. Just because we're checking into it doesn't mean we’re going to do it. ... It's part of our due diligence" -- but as John Gasaway points out, this is all smoke and mirrors:

Due diligence requires looking at all contingencies, but if Ourand and Smith are correct none of the scenarios that the NCAA is currently reviewing involve what is usually the baseline course of action, the status quo. Keep in mind an RFP is the least spontaneous and most vetted document known to humankind. Add to that the fact that an RFP coming from a bureaucracy like the NCAA would be even less spontaneous and even more vetted. And add to that the fact that an NCAA RFP concerning an event that will bring in several billion dollars over the 14-year term of the contract would be even less spontaneous and more vetted.

The bottom line is that the NCAA is always about the bottom line. Are they making money, and how much of it is coming in? The sad truth is that the NCAA Tournament is where the overwhelming majority of the money is made during the college basketball season, from the lucrative television deal to the tickets sold at the door to the merchandise sold at the games to the advertising dollars.

You don't think that adding an extra 31 games is going to bring in more money, more viewers, and more ticket sales? And you think the NCAA really cares about lowering the quality of the event?

The NCAA views it like this: those extra 31 teams that will get bids to the tournament all have fan bases. Every one of those fan bases is going to follow their team's run through the tournament whether they are the 60th team or the 90th team. To think otherwise is preposterous, which is why the NCAA will look to expand despite to outcry from die-hards like myself claiming an inferior product.

The issue with this line of thinking is that the NCAA completely ignores the reason that the tournament is so popular. Namely, the bracket. I've written about this before:

While the basketball is always great, with story books to be written and legends to be made and buzzers to be beaten, what draws in so many random fans (casual fans would be watching regardless, random fans are the people that show up just because they filled out a bracket) is the bracket. Think about it. By printing out this one Tournament Tree that perfectly fills an 8X11 piece of paper and picking 63 winners, all of a sudden every "random fan" that has never heard of John Wall or Coach K, that thinks a pick-and-roll is the most effective way to dispose of a booger, that makes their picks based on how well the team's colors would match their bedset, now has a dog in every fight.

They now have a reason to cheer and yell and scream and get into each and every game on TV. It doesn't matter that they don't know the names of the players, the coaches, or even the team. All that matters is that they picked the blue team, and the blue team has the ball, down by one with 30 seconds left.

Seriously, take a second and think about the pools you entered last season. How many people filled out a bracket that knew absolutely nothing about college basketball? And how many of those people ended up watching the tournament, or portions of it, simply because they had filled out a bracket?

Quite a few?

How many of those people will still fill out a bracket when it involves two pages of games? And if they don't fill out a bracket, how many of those people will still watch the tournament?

The funny thing is that I'm not even against expansion. I actually think that it would be a good move for the NCAA to expand to 68 or 72 teams. Instead of making the one play-in game seem like a consolation prize for the two worst teams in the field, have all the 15 and 16 seeds be play-in games. Instead of having just one game in Dayton on the Tuesday before the tournament starts, there can be two days of quadruple-headers. Not only does it open up three or seven more spots in the tournament, it gives the NCAA a chance to advertise, sell tickets, sell television rights, etc. for two more days chock full of hoops.

Want to make it even more interesting?

Instead of having the play-in games be for the 15 and 16 seeds, make the play-in games be for the 11 and 12 seeds, which generally end up being the last eight spots for at-large teams. Look at last season. You don't think that people would have been excited for games like Creighton-Arizona? St. Mary's-Maryland? Florida-Wisconsin?

The most ironic part in all of this talk of tournament expansion has nothing to do with basketball.

By expanding to 96 teams, the NCAA is only going to take more college students out of class for that much more time during March.

Isn't missed class time the NCAA's main argument as to why the BCS is still around?