With March Madness in full swing, the ongoing yearly debate is whether or not the tournament should expand.
NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball Dan Gavitt told reporters earlier this year that the NCAA will discuss expanding the tournament to either 72 or 76 teams after this year’s tournament concludes.
As tournament expansion becomes a real possibility, the debate becomes which teams deserve those extra spots.
Miami OH University men’s basketball head coach Travis Steele commented on the potential expansion of the NCAA tournament during his post-game press conference in the loss to Massachusetts in the Mid-American Conference tournament.
“If they ever expand (the tournament), it’s not gonna help mid-major basketball,” Steele said.
The expansion would not help mid-major basketball at all. If the tournament had expanded this year to 72 teams, Auburn, Oklahoma, San Diego State and Indiana would have made it in, as they were the first four teams out per the NCAA Selection Committee.
But do fans really want to see an Auburn team that finished with an overall .515 win percentage? Or Indiana who has a losing record of 9-11 in conference play?
No, fans want to see upsets. Fans want to see more mid-major programs have a chance to dance and go on a Cinderella run.
Even without a true Cinderella team, mid-major programs were still a huge storyline in this year’s tournament.
Miami OH went 31-0 in the regular season, sparking a huge online debate on whether they deserve an at-large bid, which they deservingly got. In their First Four matchup against SMU, they averaged 2.8 million viewers, making it the most-watched First Four game played in Dayton.
In addition, CBS Sports and TNT Sports reported that the primetime window, which included Michigan vs Howard and VCU vs North Carolina, was the most-watched first-round window in NCAA tournament history, averaging 12.5 million viewers.
Both of those games were against mid-major programs that were potential Cinderella teams, with Howard making it a four-point game at half against the number one seed Michigan and VCU having a massive second-half comeback to upset North Carolina in overtime.
Fans watched these games hoping for an upset.
Expanding the tournament and giving the spots to mid-major programs benefits everyone. Allocating the spots to mid-majors increases TV viewership, the chance for upsets, boosts the schools’ revenue and enrollment, while giving them advertising on a national scale.
Athletic departments boost their revenue by sending teams to the tournament through revenue sharing. Around $2 million is distributed on a six-year rolling basis to the conference in the round of 64 to all teams who participate and progress through each round. The money is then distributed evenly to each team in the conference, even if your team isn’t in the tournament.
Universities themselves benefit from success in March Madness. A study done by the Journal of Sports Economics found that for non-Power Five schools that go on a Cinderella run in the tournament, freshman enrollment increased by 4.4% for private schools two years after the tournament run.
If we are going to expand the NCAA tournament, we need at-large spots allocated for mid-major programs instead of mediocre Power Five schools.