Column: March is mad enough
Published April 6, 2010
The NCAA just concluded its annual spectacle of March Madness, but will next year's tournament be too mad for its own good?
Rumors have circulated since December that the NCAA wants to expand its postseason basketball tournament to 96 teams. Last Thursday, in its annual state-of-the-game address to begin the festivities for Final Four weekend in Indianapolis, Greg Shaheen, NCAA vice president for basketball and business strategies, presented an O.J. Simpson-like "if we were to do it, this is exactly how we would." ESPN's Dana O'Neil said the speech was composed of 2,505 words. That's pretty darn specific.
Shaheen said the tournament would remain three weeks long but the top eight seeds would truly receive an advantage through playing one fewer game than seeds nine through 24. The difference compared to the current format is the first weekend. Instead of everyone playing two games as they do now, the nine through 24 seeds play three games between Thursday and Tuesday while seeds one through eight receive a first-round bye and only compete in two.
Simply put, Northern Iowa would have played two games in four days entering its matchup against Kansas, which would have only competed in one. Would senior guard Ali Farokhmanesh have had enough bounce in his legs to nail the 3-point dagger to knock out KU?
I have not heard a single proponent of expansion, nor could I imagine how anyone could be one. But, as we all know, the NCAA does what's best for the NCAA, and that means money.
The reason expansion is likely for next year's tournament is that the NCAA can now opt out of its current television contract with CBS, which pays $545 million annually for the rights to broadcast the games. The NCAA is banking on the assumption a network is willing to pay more because more schools (and therefore more fans) are involved.
But what the NCAA doesn't seem to realize (or maybe care about) is the imminent deterioration of the March Madness brand. What makes the tournament so popular is the non-basketball fans who tune in to check their office pool brackets. Those fans (who represent the majority) generally lose interest as the tourney progresses.
Who wants to fill out a 96-team bracket? Add in the fact that one-third of the field receives a bye, and you get an unattractive mess. It might even scare away President Barack Obama from the next edition of Baracketology.
The basketball enthusiasts will still be there every step of the way, but not many others, as is already represented through declining audience numbers. The prospects for Cinderella just got darker; no more Ohio's over Georgetown's in the first round. Maybe Wichita State over Texas Tech in the 16-17 matchup but then again, who really cares?
Butler's dizzying run to the finals would still be possible, but not Saint Mary's, Cornell, Washington and Northern Iowa in the Sweet 16. Because the vast majority of higher seeds are awarded to power conference schools, an expansion is skewed toward them, as it is in football (but let's not go there).
The NCAA would make more money in the short-term, which it may distribute throughout its three divisions, but in the long run, if television ratings continue to dwindle, the NCAA would lose money. Should that happen, the NCAA brand will depreciate.
And no one wants that, greedy, profit-squeezing corporations included.