Coach Knight Right On March Madness

March 19, 2009

This posting covers an idea floated Sunday night on ESPN by Bobby Knight about the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tourney.  Expand it.

 

LAS VEGAS, NV (March 18, 2009) – Hopefully I’ll have a chance to interview Coach Knight at the Wynn Las Vegas Sports Book over the next two days for March Madness. 

 

Again, I’ll be on Twitter giving you updates throughout the weekend.

 

One of the questions I’ll ask Coach Knight is his idea about expanding the field of 65 (really 64) to 128.  In other words, have double the amount of teams and each team will play one additional game.

 

More specifically, I’ll ask him if he came up with the idea just to stop all the bickering on Selection Sunday.  To hear ESPN’s Dick Vitale and Jay Bilas go after each other over whether Arizona or St. Mary’s should have made the field got downright nasty.

 

Here’s my suggestion.  Expand the field to 96 teams.  The top 32 teams will have a bye.  That means if you’re a 1 through 8 seed, you don’t play in the play-in game. 

 

The 9 through 16 seeds will play a home game against teams seeded 65 to 96.  The losers of those play-in games will be eligible to play in the NIT.

 

This will bring in more revenue for a team that made it to the big dance but most likely won’t make it to the Sweet 16 or Elite 8.

 

And as we’ve seen the 64-65 play-in game has some relevance to the teams playing.  Why not allow 32 other teams that same chance?

 

And maybe this plan will stop the bickering.  Yeah right.  Let’s be serious.  There will be arguments that a 15-13 team had every right to be seeded 96 and not a 17-12 team from a weak conference.

 

That means this means something to kids, the schools, and fans of college hoops.

 

Got a better plan?  Let me see it here.

 

 

Written by John Daly Sports · Filed Under Basketball/College 

Comments

Got something to say?