Mandatory Credit: Chris Jones-Imagn Images
Well, unfortunately, it must be true.
I figured after a few days of thought and taking the pulse of the public that our sports leaders would retract last week’s decision that will change, for the worse, college sports’ most popular national tournament.
Wrong.
They’re sticking with their decision to expand the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments. Instead of doing something about $50 million football rosters and upwards of $20 million (and beyond) in men’s basketball, they’re expanding what’s been a very manageable tournament to 100, or 110, or 90, or 76, or whatever the number is.
Other than money, I don’t really know why they’re doing it. Someone obviously has a weird obsession to confuse the process of filling out a bracket, one of our grandest pastimes. What’s next? A 48-team College Football Playoff?
Bring it on.
The will of the people?
No way.
I didn’t hear a public outcry. Did you?
If it’s broken, fix it. If it’s not broken, leave it the hell alone.
I was hoping common sense would have prevailed in the days following the announcement. I was hoping that, over the Mother’s Day weekend, the reaction would have been so overwhelmingly negative that our trusted leaders would have said, “Oops, just kidding.”
Thursday?
Crickets.
Friday?
Silence.
Saturday?
I’m not sure they’re changing their minds.
Sunday?
Ain’t happening.
The NCAA, or whomever made this bad decision, has dug in.
“We’re out here trying to generate more interest in the regular season, and expansion doesn’t help,” Gonzaga’s Mark Few told CBS. “That’s where we’ve been struggling. Don’t screw with something when you already know it’s great. The tournament is great, as is.”
Yes it is.
Or was.
NCAA Tournament suits went the wrong way. Instead of rewarding more mediocrity than the tournament already rewards, they could have gone the other way. What was wrong with the 64-team, no-play-in tournament that we celebrated between 1985 and 2000?
Selection Sunday is (used to be) appointment television viewing, pencils and brackets as mandatory as chips and salsa, beverages, and live look-ins as teams react on CBS or ESPN to their NCAA assignments.
Wake me when it’s time for the Round of 64. Those meaningless play-in games are nothing more than barely .500 teams being able to say they made an NCAA Tournament.
This isn’t progress. It’s further dumbification of college sports that were just fine before conference expansion, before the no-rules transfer portal, and before our NCAA leaders essentially flipped off ticket-buying fans whose loyalty made college sports what they are.
The last dozen teams selected aren’t in the NCAA Tournament; they’re trying to play their way into it. Will people waste time watching if they’re not emotionally or financially invested in one of the wannabes trying to make the official tournament 64?
Maybe. Probably not.
Once reaching Thursday of the tournament’s opening week, that’s when teams can claim that they’re part of the Dance. That’s when the real viewership begins.
More evidence, I guess, of what we get when big money is involved.
Beyond that, I’m curious to see which prominent coach gets the first new contract with one of the bonuses explicitly being for making the Round of 64 — for being one of the selected teams not competing in Tuesday-Wednesday play-in games.
Howard, Maryland-Baltimore County, North Carolina State, Texas, Lehigh, Prairie View A&M, SMU, and Miami (Ohio) comprised the play-in round during last season’s tournament. Remember Miami (Ohio)? Despite being 31-1 going into 2026 Selection Sunday, Miami had to play its way into the NCAA Tournament, so is this the RedHawks Rule, the unwieldy Field of 76?
Possibly.
Is it too late to reverse this decision?
Unfortunately, yes.
(Columnist Randy Peterson, a past Iowa Sportswriter of the Year winner, can be reached at randypete4846@gmail.com or at any Okoboji-area beverage/food establishment between the hours of open and close.)
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