By Cyote Williams | Times Vedette
If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.
That phrase seems to be one of the most common and heralded of all time. Or is it?
The origin is attributed to Bert Lance, director of Office of Management and Budget under President Jimmy Carter. The saying is likely older than that, but that was its first mainstream use (as mainstream as budget management gets, anyway).
Either way, it is deeply rooted in truth. However, no one seemed to tell the NCAA. Either that, or, more likely, they just aren’t listening. The college football playoff has been needlessly expanded twice with more expansions possibly on the way. Now, they have brought the same mindset to the college basketball national tournament. It already expanded slightly a few years back when it added the First Four to take it from 64 to 68.
ESPN stated: “The primary driver of this move hasn’t been money, but rather access for at-large bids for power conferences. The expansion has been pushed by power conferences, which have grown throughout the course of the current deal.” This just two paragraphs after the source who broke the news stressed that there would be a profit.
Even still, the NCAA will try to sell this as a win for the little guy. More teams in the tournament means the potential for overlooked teams to get into the big dance. But that is clearly not the case. The first four games are currently played by two 16-seed teams and two 11-seed teams. The 16 seeds, which lose 99% of the time, do see some benefit from making the big dance. The payouts can sometimes fund the programs’ athletic departments in a massive way. The 11-seed games last year were played by NC State, Texas, SMU and Miami of Ohio. Three of those team’s aren’t exactly hurting for cash. Miami of Ohio was the only undefeated team heading into the tournament and had to win a play-in game just to be the 11 seed.
Just like the expansion of the College Football Playoff, this is only happening to benefit the major conferences that have lucrative TV deals with major broadcasters. At least in college football, it is presented as being as beneficial to the Group of Five schools. But, at least so far, neither the NCAA nor ESPN have shown an ounce of dignity to pretend like this expansion is anything but giving a handout to a team like Auburn that couldn’t stop complaining about missing the tournament despite finishing in the bottom half of its conference.
Major conferences will benefit from better seeding and more guaranteed spots while mid-majors will get the raw end of the deal and have to play even more games to advance further in the tournament. Mid-majors, which are already disproportionally affected by the transfer portal, are having their sporting lives made more difficult by the decision-makers at the NCAA. All this still has to go through committee votes, but it is being reported as a formality.
Don’t hold your breath waiting for the NCAA to cave to public pressure and fix this anytime soon, even if it is clearly broken.
Reach out with comments, suggestions, story ideas and more to cyote@dmcityview.com.