After the typically significant and entertaining first weekend of the NCAA tournament-- the entertainment value, obviously, hinging on whether your bracket is only reasonably shredded or appears like the canine tore it to bits-- it must be asked.

Is it actually worth broadening March Madness, and turning the existing 68-team field into 90 or 106 or whatever size field is being drifted?

Prior to responding to-- and my ultimate answer might surprise you-- let's think about some of the reasons that competition growth is even a talking point.

It seems to be an animal task of those who already have the influence, those schools and conferences who get the majority of the field as it is and can't imagine why the ninth, 11th-place and 10th groups in the Big Ten or SEC shouldn't be in also. To be truthful, it's almost impersonated an option between going super-sized in numbers or just having the huge kids break off and form their own tournament.

And if you don't think that's being discussed, if you figure the upsets that make the first weekend of March Madness so special are indispensable, you haven't followed the method the power conferences and their schools have actually angled to increase their power and impact within the NCAA structure at the cost of everybody else.

As we kept in mind last spring, West Virginia coach Bob Huggins blurted out what I'm sure a lot of power conference coaches and administrators were believing.

" They're doing it in football," Huggins informed ESPN's Myron Medcalf at Big 12 media day prior to the 2021-22 season. "Why would not they do it? The presidents and athletic directors that have all the juice, why would not they do it? Makes no sense why they wouldn't do it. I think it's more 'Why wouldn't they?' than 'Why would they?' And after that, the other individuals, they can have their own competition.

"… … Those Cinderella schools are putting 200 people, at best, in their health club. We're putting 14,000."

Fair point, I guess. Of the low seeds in this tournament, Grand Canyon-- an ambitious program with a beautiful arena and a huge city environment in Phoenix-- had the greatest typical home game presence this past season, 6,564, followed by College of Charleston (4,631), Northern Kentucky (3,103) and, in fourth place, first-round upset winner Furman (2,184).

Fairleigh Dickinson, the greatest out-of-nowhere story in this tournament and only the second 16 seed to knock out a No. 1, drew 693 patrons per house video game in the routine year. Again, West Virginia's house presence this season, 12,004, was 2,000 under capacity.

( To digress briefly: One of those expressions coaches like to use to remind their players not to get cocky is, "The other team's players are on scholarship, too." However how do they discuss Princeton? It's restricted from providing athletic scholarships by Ivy League rules but has waltzed into the Sweet 16 like it belongs there.).

The power conference individuals forget that a competition of solely huge teams would just be March without the Madness. The busted brackets, the stories of Princeton, FDU and Furman and Saint Peter's lightning-in-a-bottle go to the Elite Eight in 2022, provide the competition its juice. They keep us coming back.

There's a common measure in this field, by the method, and I believe a lot of us will be making sure we pick New Jersey schools in our brackets next year.

Isn't half the enjoyable of filling out the bracket attempting to figure out where the upsets will come from? And isn't it a special kind of bragging rights when you actually struck one? (Honest, I did have Furman over Virginia … … however not over San Diego State.).

For what it's worth, I called one upset this week.

( Then once again, also for the record, I didn't have Fairleigh Dickinson leaving the First Four.) pic.twitter.com/9IzyTrSXie.

—-- Jim_Alexander (@Jim_Alexander) March 18, 2023.

The initiative to increase the competition's size originated from the NCAA's Transformation Committee, which advised at the association's January convention that postseason fields be raised to 25 percent of a sport's Division I constituency. As of now there are 363 men's programs that are either tournament-eligible or finishing a four-year shift from Division II. The 68-team field represents 18.7 percent of those eligible.

A quarter of the field, assuming that those transitioning programs become tournament-eligible, concerns 90.75. Who wishes to break it to team No. 91 that its bubble popped?

( And while we're at it, holding to that 25 percent ratio would imply a 32-team College Football Playoff, considered that there are 129 programs in the Football Bowl Subdivision. Again, the CFP operates outside of the framework of the NCAA, and it was a tough sufficient procedure just to get them to 12.).

It is, obviously, about cash as much as about gain access to. Jon Wilner of the Bay Area News Group, in his Pac-12 Hotline column, mentioned that each game a specific group plays in the tournament is worth one monetary unit, payable to the school's conference and its groups over the following 6 years. Each game UCLA and USC participate in this year will be worth about $360,000-- and as Wilner mentioned, those systems stay with the Pac-12 even when the Trojans and Bruins sign up with the Big Ten in the fall of 2024.

More teams, more video games, most likely some renegotiation of media contracts and thus a lot more money. The traditionalists are already growling about a super-sized competition, however it's likely coming.

And it should not be a stunner that one of the advocates of tournament growth is Southeastern Conference commissioner Greg Sankey, and you can think what his primary issue would be. He began stymiing for the idea a year earlier, after Texas A&M was left out of the field regardless of a late winning streak.
No. If you are a huge conference team, with the recruiting, scheduling and financial advantages that include that status, you have no excuses. If you didn't make the tournament, blame yourself.

And while I believe a 90-team field would work, it doesn't make sense if it's only more of the exact same huge conference also-rans filling all of those additional 12 areas.

My strategy? Offer the big conferences six of the extra 12 areas, and offer the other 6 to deserving mid-major teams that didn't win their conference tournaments.

Without the little guys and all of those busted brackets, after all, this competition isn't a nationwide fascination.

jalexander@scng.com.