The Rundown: NCAA Tournament to Expand?

By Sean · Monday, June 26, 2006 · 6:07 PM |  Share | Leave a Comment 

It has been quite sometime since the last edition of “The Rundown,” but with a slow news day I figured why not bring it back. There’s plenty going on around the world of college sports, so lets get right into it.

• LSU wide receiver Xavier Carter has decided to turn pro. The sport however isn’t football. Carter, who is the best runner in collegiate track and field is going pro around the field, not on it. Carter is a NCAA champion in both indoor and outdoor track. On the football field he had a pretty good career, but he felt, and rightfully so, that his future in track will bring better opportunities. Carter will begin training for the Olympics, which is his ultimate goal down the road. (The Advocate)
• Orlando is the spot for the men’s and women’s basketball coaches committee meetings this week. At the meetings for coaches from the men’s side of the hardwood they brought up the issue of expanding the tournament field from 65 teams to a number as large as 128 teams. That would nearly double the field of teams qualifying for the postseason. The main reason the coaches have brought up this possible change is because after the Cinderella run by George Mason last year, the coaches feel that more of the teams from the lower-noticed conferences should get in.
  

  That’s what they want you to think. The real reason, in my own opinion, is that with more postseason berths for teams, the coaching jobs will last longer then usual. For a small school, a NCAA tournament berth guarantees a few more years on the contract. Some of those bubble teams that burst on selection Sunday have a coaching change soon after, with the proposed changes those teams make the tourney and the current coaches keep their jobs.
  

  The best solution is to add a few more at-large berths to the tournament. Jim Boeheim brought up the best idea for the short-term. That is to add 3 more play-in games. There’s 1 already, which is the 2 lowest seeds in the tournament. Usually there is 3 or so deserving teams on the bubble that end up not making the tournament. Those 3 extra play-in games would provide a spot for some of the more-deserving bubble teams that usually wouldn’t get in. There definitely should be an expansion of the amount of teams in the field, but it should be on a much-smaller scale. Doubling it would basically dilute any of the excitement involved in the end of the season as any team around .500 would get in. I’d say 68 teams should make the tournament, and nothing more. (ESPN)

• With all of the problems the BCS has you would think the people in charge would be talking about how to make it more fair if there’s more than 2 undefeated teams at season’s end or how to make the at-large selection ore accurate to the better teams. Well, that’s not the case. It appears that the bigger problem was the day the standings were released on. For its entirety the BCS had always come out on the Monday following play, except for the final weekend where we find out the actual BCS games on the Sunday following play. That last weekend will now be the way the entire season works. Now, when BCS standings are released, it’ll be on Sunday instead of Monday. Finally a change to the BCS I can agree with. I always did hate waiting until 6 o’clock Monday night to find out where everybody stood. (ESPN)

Tomorrow there will be some Michigan-related posts as MSC gets back onto its regular posting schedule. Template changes have kept me busy the last few days. Make sure you hit the refresh button in your Internet browser so all of the changes appear. Thanks for reading and Go Blue!