The 96-Team Tournament

Let me start this off by saying that I’m not crazy about expanding the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. In its current form I can never get a bracket right, so what chance do I have if 96 teams are in the mix?

But now that a super sized tournament seems to be a cosmic certainty, a whole nation of anti-expansionists is rising up with a wild-eyed fervor that falls somewhere between Tea Partiers and Justin Bieber fans. These people would display less emotion if Osama bin Ladin showed up in Washington and urinated on the flame beside the Tomb of the Unknown Solider.

It just goes to show you how precious this March spectacle has become to sports fans across the nation. And I count myself among those masses, because the inclusive nature of this tournament and the drama it almost always seems to generate is unrivaled by any other championship event we follow.

With that being said, I think all this outcry is a little bit silly. Leading the charge has been John Feinstein, who berated NCAA VP Greg Shaheen during a press conference on April 1 in Indianapolis. Here’s some of the exchange:

“FEINSTEIN: You’re saying you play games in the round of 32 Tuesday/Wednesday. They would then advance to regionals when?
SHAHEEN: They would continue into the regional as it’s normally scheduled now.

FEINSTEIN: So they would go Tuesday to Thursday, Wednesday to Friday?
SHAHEEN: Right.

FEINSTEIN: So they miss an entire week of school. That’s what I’m trying to get.
SHAHEEN: If you listened to my original answer, they leave now on Tuesday.

FEINSTEIN: I’m talking about the second week, not the first week. They play a game Saturday/Sunday, play a game Tuesday or Wednesday, then go directly to the regional. Tell me when in that second week they’re going to be in class.
SHAHEEN: The entire first week, the majority of the teams would be in class.”

Feinstein’s concern for the student-athlete is all well and good, because after all, the NCAA does present itself as the champion of the student-athlete.

But does anyone reading this seriously think that players like John Wall and DeMarcus Cousins were ever true student-athletes to begin with? This is college basketball, the sport where mercenaries come to campus for seven months, leave school for NBA riches and then never crack open a book again for the rest of their lives.

I follow a few of these “student-athletes” on Twitter, and judging by the grammar in their tweets either the quality of education at our higher institutions has gone into the crapper or these kids don’t really care about class at all. I tend to lean to the latter.

Don’t misunderstand me, I think attaining a college diploma should be the goal of each and every one of these guys. The vast majority of college players will find NBA locker room doors to be inaccessible, but having a diploma will help open many others.

So while Feinstein’s intentions are good, his assertions aren’t based in reality. When it comes to big-time college basketball, these kids tend to be more athlete than student.

In his column in the Washington Post on April 2, Feinstein continued to call Shaheen and Company to the mat. Here’s a snippet:

“Look, this is about money and everyone knows it. Shaheen even made indirect reference to that when he talked about 88 other championships the NCAA conducts and the need to protect their financial futures. That protection comes from squeezing every possible dollar out of men’s basketball. It was almost comical when someone asked if expansion was being contemplated for the women’s tournament. The women’s tournament costs money, so it isn’t going to be expanded anytime soon.”

Man, Feinstein dances around the key motivation for expansion but doesn’t quite come to grips with it.

This thing is about money, plain and simple. But it’s not about money in the way you think it is. Don’t color the NCAA as being a greed consumed entity like Enron, with Shaheen playing the role of Jeff Skilling.

If a super sized tournament is packaged and sold, it will undoubtedly make more money. But Shaheen and the rest of NCAA leadership won’t be lining their pockets with cash, because most of that green goes to member institutions. Here’s another Shaheen excerpt from yesterday’s press conference:

“If you were to look at the NCAA’s contract, since the expansion — over the last 25 years, the media revenue, the media rights revenue, has grown 2200%. So the curve of that is significant. And the need for that, when we’re moving 96 cents on the dollar to our membership, is to offer security in that regard.”

So the schools are getting rich, right? Not exactly. A study released a few years back and published in the Chronicle of Higher Education found that only 17 of the more than 300 Division I athletic departments earned a net profit between 2004 and 2006.

Oh, I hear you out there, arguing that turning a profit is much harder in an era when coaching salaries in college basketball and football are skyrocketing. These days you can make what amounts to a dream salary for being an ASSISTANT coach at a big time program.

But go back and read the excerpt from Feinstein’s column and you’ll get a hint at why profitability is so hard for athletic departments: “The women’s tournament costs money, so it isn’t going to be expanded anytime soon.”

Men’s basketball and football are the lone revenue stars at Football Bowl Subdivision schools. Of the 119 FBS schools playing men’s basketball in 2008, 67 of them managed to turn a profit. One of those same 119 schools made money in women’s basketball that year.

In 2008, FBS football programs generated a median net profit of just under $2 million. Men’s basketball at the same schools produced a median profit of just over $500,000. No other sport at the FBS schools, measured by median values, showed a program producing a profit.

Escalating coaching salaries in the two profit generating sports at these FBS schools represent a reinvestment into what actually butters their bread. Men’s basketball and football pay for everything else, period.

You can think of women’s collegiate sports and most men’s sports as dinner dates who will never pick up half of the check. Their endeavors are largely subsidized, and all that stuff - equipment, uniforms, travel - isn’t getting any cheaper.

I’m not saying Title IX should be wiped off the boards, but let’s be honest about the landscape it’s helped to create. The money to pay for non-profit generating sports has to come from somewhere. But if it comes from ever increasing institutional support, doesn’t that take away from the core mission of the schools themselves?

And that’s exactly why an expanded NCAA Tournament is coming about. If a bigger field attracts more money from an outfit like ESPN, then greed isn’t the engine pushing that, it’s the need to find cash to keep sports like women’s lacrosse afloat.

If the anti-expansionists see it from this perspective, perhaps they’d all be a little less emotional. But the perceived greed issue aside, their anger is also rooted in a strange elitism, sort of like that woman who turns her nose up at everyone and gets sprayed by malt liquor at the end of Dr. Dre’s “Nuthin But a “G” Thang” video.

The sports talk radiosphere was filled with irritated callers this morning who bemoaned the possibility of a “watered down” tournament. To them, the very thought of including a 20-12 South Florida team or a 23-8 Virginia Tech team would be a crime against nature. These vagrants would solid the very honor of this storied competition.

Hey guys, in case you forgot, this is a TOURNAMENT, everything comes out in the wash. It’s not like a 19-win team that skirted in on the bubble is getting fast tracked to the title game. The top teams will still be the top teams, regardless of how many participants there are.

Anyone who chooses not to watch an expanded tournament for these reasons is a nitwit of the highest order. Wow, more basketball in March, that’s a horrible idea. For you purists there will still be the spectacle of the women’s tournament, with it’s perfect number of teams and honest to goodness student-athletes. You anti-expansionists have fun extracting entertainment from that.



John Stansberry is in his thirteenth season as  a senior writer for collegeinsider.com. Check out John's blog LonelyTailgater.com.  EMAIL JOHN