Slightly Off-topic: NCAA Expands NCAA Tournament

Via Yahoo! Sports: The NCAA tournament has expanded to 68 teams. Yeah we already knew that was going to happen. What this blogger didn't expect, however, is that they would do it in a way that didn't completely screw the smallest (read: weakest?) conferences. Now, of the four play-in games now, two will feature the four weakest teams in the NCAA field and the other two games will feature the last four at-large teams in.

Why is this surprising? Well, for a couple of reasons. First and foremost, does the NCAA ever do things that exclude teams from large conferences (read: larger revenue bases) and spare (read: not screw) teams from smaller conferences? Not from what I can see. Second, it seemed to me that it would be unlikely that the NCAA would make at-large teams play for number 16 bids. Take some of last year's "last out" teams: Mississippi State, Minnesota, Virginia Tech, Florida. Does it seem appropriate that any of those teams would potentially play for a 16 seed? No. Last year's number 1 seeds would have a conniption of they had to play any of these teams in the first round. And rightly so. Mississippi State, coming off an appearance in the SEC final, is not remotely equal to Lehigh, the Patriot League champion who just narrowly avoided the play-in game but would not have done so under this scheme.

Well, the NCAA got creative in a way that I didn't anticipate they would and made it so that the last four at-large teams would play for the seeds that they would actually deserve. What this means is that Virginia Tech and Mississippi State, under the new system, might have played for a 10 seed and Minnesota and Florida might've played for another 10 seed. That's fine with me because those seeds are where any of those four teams deserved to be. Brilliant. Makes them really earn the seed that they didn't quite earn during the regular or post-season.

Overall, I like this because it's a compromise. It doesn't put the full onus on the weakest teams in the field and it doesn't put it on the last 8 teams in at-large either. Compromise is always going to get applause from me.

How does this affect our Eagles? Well, instead of playing the season to not be one of the worst two teams in the NCAA tournament field we now need to play to be not one of the worst four. THAT'S MOTIVATION! HIT THE GYM BOYS!

Pro deo et patria and GO EAGLES!