NCAA's 68-Team Field Only Good Because It Could've Been Worse

If this was all a plan by the NCAA, then it had all the evil genius trappings, short of a menacingly petted cat and thick central European accent. Consider it somewhere between sharks with laser beams on their heads and exploding a nuclear bomb along the San Andreas fault.

Monday, the NCAA announced how its new bracket would function with 68 teams, a hybrid proposal that serves only to make the field less equitable.

The NCAA opted for a compromise between power conferences and low-majors, matching the lowest four teams against each other, as well as the last four at-larges on what will effectively be Solomon Seed lines (split in half, as the biblical king and presumed expert bracket picker might've proposed to the horror of anyone who loves the 64-team field.)

Somehow, there was much rejoicing.

There was never any way to neatly pack a 68-team field onto a 64-team bracket -- which should underscore the unnecessary nature of the expansion -- but Monday's Compromise of 2010 wasn't a great plan, so much as the product of great politicking, unintentional or otherwise.

After weeks of facing the specter of a 96-team field in April, the NCAA could've had LeBron James' team produce the tournament entirely in the Greenwich Boys & Girls Club and it would've seemed masterful by comparison.

On the Friday prior to the Final Four, NCAA senior vice president Greg Shaheen faced reporters on the subject of expanding the field of 64 to 96 teams, speaking in tones that made the expansion seem all but certain.

As writer John Feinstein thundered away about the illogic of the leap like Tom Cruise's Lt. Kaffee cross-examining a kid trying to BS his way through a book report, Shaheen had few certain answers, except to imply that 96, and impossibly large billboard-sized brackets, was simply to be a fact of life.

When the NCAA announced plans to expand only by three teams weeks later, it darn well felt like, in a phrase that still matters, a 16-over-1 upset.

So, when the NCAA revealed how it wanted to handle the 68-team field Monday, the cumbersome add-on to the 64 team field seemed downright elegant by comparison.

The NCAA promoted one awful idea, followed up with a markedly less awful idea, and won the hearts and minds of many. Congress would be impressed.

Granted, it's not all bad, and Shaheen is hardly Monty Burns guarding the company coffers at all expenses. There were no good answers available in a 68-team format, so the NCAA's proposal is a manageable response to a bad, though self-imposed, situation. The new format will remove some of the stigma from the old play-in game, but beating a team on TruTV, between episodes of "Operation Repo" and "Bait Car" is hardly the sort of thing you'll share with your grandchildren or stitch a banner for.

It should also increase payouts for low-major teams, which may be the biggest plus of the plan. Though it makes the usual play-in victims, the historically black colleges of the SWAC and the MEAC, even more likely participants on opening day, they'll have a better chance of earning an extra unit for winning a game. In 2010 numbers, the winning team's league would get roughly $1.4 million, paid out over six years.

The "First Four" games, as the NCAA hopes to brand them, will also make opening night more interesting. The current play-in game, by comparison, draws the sort of ratings that remind why schools teach fractions. Adding four major or high-major teams may be a not-so-subtle giveaway to broadcast partners, but anything that keeps eyeballs off the Kardashians is certainly a benefit to all mankind.

The bad, however, is the Solomon Seed matchup does nothing to preserve the integrity of the bracket. It marks 12 seeds as irrelevant as the original play-in teams, forcing the last teams in to play seven games to win a national title instead of six. On its face, this all but admits the tournament is already too big, since so little concern is given to damaging a 12-seed's chance to win the tournament.

The opposing seeds don't have it so great, either.

The NCAA hasn't released the locations for the tournaments yet, but if the Solomon Seeds are allowed to play on the same court as the subregional, the winning team will have an obvious advantage. Even if it doesn't play on the same floor, the extra game will be a benefit to some of the Solomon seeds. That edge might balanced out by the exhaustion of playing an extra do-or-die game, but either way, the tournament is no longer equal to all participants, or even to all teams on the same seed line.

The 68-team proposal may also still form a natural bridge to the reviled 96-team format, if the NCAA plans to gradually turn the heat up on an expanded format. If the "First Four" games are on subregional sites, the logical leap to four games at each site instead of one, an increase of eight teams per region over the 64-team field, is a simple one to make.

At least the proposal means, for now, the 64-field stays roughly intact once Thursday rolls around and that's something to be thankful for. After all, it isn't all bad.

But it doesn't mean the proposal is all that good, either.

It just seems that way because it could have been so much worse.