Bruce Pearl said in an interview recently that the NCAA Tournament should be increased in size to 80 teams.  Granted, it will make the opening rounds extremely confusing, harkening back to the days before the bracket of 64 and 65 teams, with the round of 48 which gave 16 teams automatic first round byes.

It also will provide for 15 more games in the tournament, which will add millions of more dollars into the NCAA cash cow coffers.  But besides the obvious implications of this idea, the more underlying point of this idea is team merit.

Maybe this season was a fluke, but there has seemingly never been a year since the field reached 64, then 65 teams, where it was harder to reach the NCAA Tournament than this season.  It used to be if you were from a major conference such as the Big East, Big XII, SEC, ACC, Big Ten, or PAC-10, you were a lock for a tournament bid if you had at least 20 victories.  However, don’t tell that piece of conventional wisdom to Clemson, Florida St, Syracuse, West Virginia, Kansas St, or Michigan, just to name a few.  Even lesser conference teams such as Appalachian St, Missouri St, and the 23-8 Air Force squad (which was ranked in the Top 15 for most of the season) all had good cases for NCAA Tournament bids.  Normally most of them would be playing their hearts out in the NCAA Tournament, but this year they all get to tear up the NIT, and play for what many sportswriters call the not so coveted position of the “#66 team in the nation”.

Sure it makes for the best NIT, RPI and records wise since the days in the mid 1970’s where you had to win the conference tournament to make the NCAA Tournament.  But what are these players and teams playing for besides pride, and the occasional viewing from a pro scout?  Neither is big enough to justify the cause in my opinion.  Yes, the student fans of these teams may love being able to go to a postseason game at home instead of a neutral site some 2,000 miles and two time zones away.  Still if any fan of these teams were asked if they would rather be in the NCAA Tournament or the NIT, you can bet that 99% of them would pick the former and not the latter.  Call it what you will, the NIT isn’t the NCAA, and it never will be.

How shall we fix this problem?  Well, I suggest we make the NIT a play-in tournament for the NCAA’s.  That way we can have that 80 team field, just have a majority of the teams make the NIT and have to win to get in the NCAA.  That way those NIT games can still be on home campus sites too, and the fan interest would be even greater.  It would be a win-win situation for both tournaments, the NCAA gets more teams in the field, and the NIT gets more fan interest.  If anything, more teams get to prove their mettle where it counts, at the end of the season.