Dan Wetzel Says The NCAA Has No Reason To Expand The Tournament, But We Can Think Of A Couple

Neither is particuarly good.

The other day, Dan Wetzel posted this article and said he couldn’t see any good reason to expand the NCAA tournament.

We basically agree with him and would go one step further: cut it back to 64. The First Four really doesn’t help and is in fact a dilution.

Yeah...that won’t happen and the NCAA is almost certain to expand the field. And unlike Wetzel, we can think of two really strong (as opposed to good) reasons why they might.

Reason #1: the House Settlement.

The NCAA admitted that it had to settle or face potential bankruptcy. That in and of itself could lead to the NCAA wanting to re-fill the coffers a bit.

Reason #2: this may or may not have happened, but it won’t surprise us if the NCAA heard from the power conferences, who basically said either give us more slots or we’re doing our own tournament.

There have been stories about the power conferences breaking away for some time, which would be the end of the NCAA. In other words, expansion may be an offer they can’t refuse.

It’s impossible to know but this whole expansion seems to have come up rather quickly. If it turns out that the ACC, SEC, Big 12 and Big Ten get the majority of the expansion slots and maybe an increase overall as well, then it’s pretty clear what happened and why.