Reactions to the NCAA Tournament format from around the web

By now, you've either heard about the NCAA's new format for the 68 team tournament, or you aren't actually a college basketball fan. As with any important and potentially controversial decision, some will love it and some will hate it. You already know our opinion of the so-called "hybrid model". Here is what the rest of the internet thinks (Ed. Note: If you've read a good article or blog post that we haven't linked, send it our way):


Andy Glocker, SI.com: That said, after some reflection, this hedge feels disappointing. Had the committee elected to have the eight worst teams play-in for four 16 seeds, it would be another step in favoritism for the major conferences, but it also would have much more significantly strengthened the bottom of the bracket. With three more at-large teams in the main bracket in place of weak small-conference champions, almost an entire seed line would have been pushed down. For example, a trio of 14-seeds last year would have ended up as 15s in the new version, which means the chances of big first-round upsets would be higher (right, Georgetown?). Maybe that would weaken the last two weekends to have a 2-seed (or, heaven forbid, a 1) go out in the first round, but it would have added to the magic of the opening two days.

The other option, to have the final eight at-large teams play in for four spots, would have created a more compelling opening quadrupleheader (or two doubleheaders) and wouldn't have significantly weakened the main bracket. That solution would have resulted in one additional weak team in the round of 64, at the expense of one at-large team, and we all probably could live with the possible sacrifice of a Florida or Virginia Tech -- in exchange for a larger dose of credible tourney action on Tuesday.


Jay Bilas, ESPN.com: Whether the committee votes to make the worst four at-large teams play at the same time that the worst four overall teams play, we all know that the teams seeded 61 through 64 are lesser teams than the worst four at-large teams, which are among the top 50 teams in the nation. It doesn't matter what we call the four games. They are play-in games, and the rules are different for inclusion in those games.

The only sport in the world that compromises the field without pool play is the NCAA basketball tournament. And you know what? After the "play-in" games are over and the tournament really starts on Thursday, we still will have a great 64-team tournament. This decision cannot screw up this tournament. It is idiot-proof -- and thank goodness for that.


Dana O'Neil, ESPN.com: Beleaguered by worry of tournament expansion and exhausted with conversations about conference expansion, coaches finally found something they could get their arms around in this summer of upheaval -- compromise.

News that the NCAA selection committee decided on a hybrid format for its expanded field of 68 was greeted with almost universal approval as the Elite Youth Basketball League Finals at Peach Jam got underway here on Monday.

Certainly everyone has their own self-interests -- coaches at the smaller schools wished winning the conference tournament title meant a little more, while coaches at power leagues argued that their résumé was greater than that of your typical 16-seed -- but recognizing that there is no recipe to satisfy everyone, the coaches I talked to conceded this was the best of a difficult situation.


John Gasaway, Basketball Prospectus: Now, if you’re talking about a team seeded as high as a 10, there’s a good chance that said team is way better than the selection committee could have realized. To require a team that good to win an extra game while every year the 64th-best team in the field is guaranteed a comparatively easy six-win path is antithetical to what’s made the NCAA tournament the best postseason spectacle in major American team sports. We’ve trusted the tournament’s outcomes precisely to the extent that the courts have been neutral, the brackets have been balanced, and the opportunities have been equal.

Don’t get me wrong. A 68-team field with a funky hybrid play-in round is ten times better than a 96-team field. But today was a mistake and, worse, it was entirely avoidable.


Matt Norlander, College Hoops Journal: But the hodge-podge isn’t doing it for me because, worst of all, this idea that we’ve got some seeds that will be floated around makes no sense. There’s a possibility that the two games featuring four at-large teams could have, oh, a 10-seed and a 12-seed on the line? Huh? Logistically, a 10-seed should be better than a 12-seed. So why would teams that weren’t good enough to make the cut of 60 be playing for the right for a 10/7 matchup in the newly named second round?

No. That’s just idiotic, and if we must have this half-and-half formula, then the two at-large games should be strictly for the 12 or 13 line.


Mike DeCourcy, SportingNews.com: Overall, the committee's work hints at the touch of a legislative genius — the sort of person who conceives workable ideas that can widely be agreed upon as solid compromises. The format the tournament will use was not among those originally identified by Guerrero as possible solutions. He declined to identify who came up with this approach, though. He said it developed from "a natural evolution" in the discussion.

It's not as though the committee members have found a way to make calorie-free ice cream cones, but what they've conceived causes the least disruption to the fewest amount of people — and gives Turner something decent to put on TV.

The at-large teams can't gripe about being involved in the extra game. Without expansion, three of them would have been playing in the NIT.


Andrew Murawa, Rush the Court: So, the NCAA punted. But punts can be okay, so long as you don’t string too many of them together. And they certainly beat fumbles. Given that there were problems with putting all of either type of egg (the AQs or the bubble teams) in the opening round basket, this compromise is just fine.


Pat Forde, ESPN.com: In the NCAA’s ongoing effort to make the best of a bad decision, it unveiled a 68-team basketball tournament Monday that has some appeal.

Unfortunately, the appeal wanes when you remember that there was no good reason to expand the field at all.

We don’t need more games. We don’t need more mediocre teams in the tourney. We don’t need more system tweaks designed to benefit the schools from big-money conferences while further marginalizing the little guys.

This has been the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee’s approach under outgoing chair Dan Guerrero, who is the athletic director at UCLA when not wearing the hat of March Madness Great Compromiser. Twice now, Guerrero’s group scared us into thinking they’d ruin the NCAA tournament, then delivered something not nearly as terrifying.

They scared us with the specter of 96, then delivered 68. They let us fear a banishment of eight small-conference champions to a four-game play-in round of no intrinsic value, then delivered a hybrid format combining both at-large teams and small-school automatic qualifiers.


Gary Parrish, CBSSports.com: I wanted no expansion, but I thought the NCAA would expand to 96. So a 68-team field is fine with me because it's not as bad as it could've been. Likewise, I wanted the final eight at-large teams to play "opening round" games, but I thought the NCAA would simply take the eight worst automatic qualifiers. So a compromise between the two -- the final four at-large teams and the worst four automatic qualifiers will compete in the "opening round" games -- is not as bad as it could've been. So I'm not as mad as I could've been. In fact, I'm cool with it. Had this format been in place last season, we would've got something like UTEP vs. Mississippi State and Ole Miss. vs. Illinois on the Tuesday or Wednesday after Selection Sunday, and though those games aren't marquee in the traditional sense, they are much more intriguing than Arkansas-Pine Bluff vs. Winthrop.

In other words, I'll watch.

For the first time ever, I'll watch the NCAA tournament before Thursday.


Eamonn Brennan, ESPN.com: Sure, the tournament was probably better with 64 teams. It was certainly less unwieldy. If there's a downside to the hybrid format, it's that lack of simplicity. It makes the tournament bracket more difficult to understand, and in an age where casual college hoops viewership is under siege from all entertainment sides, that's not a good thing.

But expansion was always going to happen. At the end of the day, the NCAA tournament will now feature more teams, the play-in rounds will actually provide entertainment and fans will be able to watch every game on one network or another throughout the entirety of the tournament. That doesn't sound so bad, does it?

No, it doesn't. Which means it might be time to admit something horrifying: NCAA tournament expansion might actually be a good thing. Bunker sold separately


Joe Lunardi, ESPN.com: Really, what's not to like? Only two additional conference tournament winners (instead of eight overall) are added to the first-round mix, and -- with the last four at-large selections now identified for "First Four" matchups -- the identity of the highly speculated "Last Four In" will now be known. Bracketologists from coast-to-coast should rejoice!