State-Journal.com - Expanding the NCAA field to 96 teams doesn't sound like a wise decision

Sometime between filling in your first and fiftieth NCAA Tournament bracket in the next couple days, I encourage you to take “the eye test” and examine the “entire body of work” under your nose.

I may have borrowed those phrases from bracketologists, but it doesn’t take a college hoops expert to appreciate the blend of balance and possibility that lie within those intersecting lines – particularly in a year of college basketball where no true juggernaut has emerged.

But there’s another reason I’m encouraging this moment of reflection, a far more apprehensive reason, and it’s that this Mona Lisa format may be thrown to the furnace as early as next year.

Plenty of black ink and hot air has already gone into weighing the pros and cons of an expanded NCAA Tournament, the most discussed format being a 96-team super tournament. Changes could be incorporated next year, they could hold off until 2013, but the powers that be seem increasingly confident they are going to happen.

Money, of course, is the reason behind reform, the reason the NCAA is ready to rip up its $6 billion television deal with CBS like it’s Monopoly money. Forget the outcry of teams that fell on the wrong side of the bubble this year, like every year, or the charts and graphs that illustrate just how darn tough it is to make the postseason in college basketball compared to other sports. Over the last 30 years, the Big Dance has grown into one of the most thrilling and enjoyable sporting events in the world, and it has done it by limiting the sample size to the best of the best.

For the sake of a bigger payday, the noble stewards of our student-athletes appear willing to toy with paradise.

Historically, expansion and innovation have been a positive force in the game of basketball since Dr. Naismith first wrote out those 13 original rules. There was, of course, the advent of the dribble, the catalyst behind the sport’s mass appeal. Later came progressive ideas like the 3-point line and the shot clock, wild successes by any measure. Likewise, the NCAA Tournament has grown from its original inception as an eight-team tournament in 1939 to the format we have today. The jump to 96 seems a natural extension of the forces that have been shaping the game since its inception.

But I’m still not sold.

Call me old-fashioned, but I don’t know if I will ever be able to wrap my brain around the unfairness of a team with a record hovering around .500 not making the Ultra Dance. I’m still bound to the idea that the regular season should count for something more than a seed in the tournament, that making the field is an accomplishment in its own right. I have a dozen forgotten participation trophies somewhere to back me up.

My skepticism grows strongest when looking at this tiered page of perfection. I cannot ignore the feeling that an additional story will bring the magic all toppling down.