Posted on 04/22/2010 12:15:48 PM PDT by rhema
The NCAA plans to expand the men's basketball tournament from 65 to 68 teams beginning next year and announced a new, $10.8 billion broadcasting deal with CBS and Turner Broadcasting on Thursday that will allow every game to be shown live for the first time.
The three-team expansion is much more modest than 80- and 96-team proposals the NCAA outlined just a few weeks ago at the Final Four. The move coincides with the new, 14-year broadcasting arrangement that interim NCAA president Jim Isch said will provide an average of $740 million to its conferences and schools each year.
The NCAA badly wanted every tourney game broadcast live.
"It was a goal from the very, very beginning and I believe it's what our memberships want and it's want our fans want across the country," Isch said. "I think without question, it was one of the driving factors in our position and why CBS and Turner make such great partners."
The men's tournament last expanded in 2001, adding one team to the 64-team field that was set in 1985. Talk of tweaking March Madness again generated a lot of chatter from fans worried the competition would be watered down and those who feared the additional bracket guesswork needed to predict a winner.
Syracuse coach Jim Boeheim, who favored expansion, said the proposal was "better than nothing."
"As a coach I'd like to see more people get in but 68 is a good step and the easiest way, to have the least amount of turmoil," Boeheim said. "There's really no way to do a little bit bigger expansion. You can't expand by eight, 10. There's no way to figure that out. This is the easiest way and hopefully down the road there will be a bigger expansion."
(Excerpt) Read more at hosted.ap.org ...
Greed knows no bounds.
Only tards watch that nonsense. More money for the networks to make us into serfs so they can spew their propaganda. Sadly people who are conservative who watch sports cannot connect the dots.
It’s OK to relax once in a while. If someone wants to watch sports now and again I can hardly begrudge them that. It isn’t like you can always see your favorite team live.
Lighten up. If people can’t find moments of meaningless joy in sports, or fishing, or hunting, or whatever trivial entertainment suits them ... what’s the point?
Conservative or not — one cannot live for politics.
SnakeDoc
More “Bread and circuses” for the proles.
ML/NJ
I agree. I have not really supported any expansion, but I’d rather see a larger expansion than this stupid play-in game option. I does not good for the smaller schools to play when no one else is watching and get knocked out before the first full day of games. I would have preferred either a 16 or 32 game expansion to this.
I guess if you are going to have that silly two team play-in game in Dayton, Ohio every year then you might as well round out the number and go with an even 68
And God said, “Let there be an NIT?”
That is PRECISELY why I oppose such a small expansion.
This move will serve one purpose, and one purpose ONLY: to eliminate four automatic bids (small conferences) from the field of 64.
That’s ALL this is about: creating four more bids for big conferences in the real part of the tournament (64 team field). Now even automatic bids won’t get small conference champions into the field anymore; meanwhile the NCAA can now freely give the ACC a 9th team in the tournament, the Big East a 10th team, the Big ten a 9th team, and so on......
Utter crap is what this is. Without a guarantee WRITTEN INTO THE RULES that “no winner of an automatic bid shall have to play a play-in game,” this is just College Basketball trying their best to be the new BCS System.
If you are a small conefernce school (and there are many) you just got ROYALLY SCREWED by the NCAA.
What's wrong? Were you picked last in gym class?
Could have been worse. Could have been 31 teams, I suppose.
With apologies to the movie “Stripes”...Lighten up, Frantzie! (Any of YOU retards make ME watch NCAA basketball....and I’ll kill ya.)
“This move will serve one purpose, and one purpose ONLY: to eliminate four automatic bids (small conferences) from the field of 64.”
It’s also about making it so that the top 4 get buys...Can’t have the proles making the Bamster look bad, no?
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