even weaker BE next year

[brewcity77]

Why would you think that?

This is all about $$$ and increasing viewership.  Adding a bunch of low-major conference champions isn't going to draw in the numbers.  (Furthermore create the incentive for conferences to "toss" their regular season champion from the conference tournament.)  Outside of possibly giving an auto bid to the Great West, I can pretty much guaranty you that all new bids will be to at-large schools, the majority of which will be from BCS conferences.

First, the Great West is getting an automatic bid. No question to that. The only reason they didn't this year is because the NCAA committee doesn't give automatic bids to first year conferences. C-USA went through the same thing back in its inception year.

I think that giving 24 at-large bids to BCS conferences is more than enough. There's been plenty of cries that the regular season doesn't have enough meaning. If you listen to the Dan Patrick show, it's pretty much discussed every week from January to March. How much interest would anyone have had in seeing Quinnipiac play Robert Morris in the Northeast Conference season finale this year? Pretty much zero. But if you know that Quinnipiac can secure a berth in the NCAA tournament, the game would get more viewership from hardcore hoops fans. ESPN especially would be able to find a lot more worthwhile games. Look at how many of the conference tournaments get airtime. If the regular season meant an automatic bid as well, that would increase the ability for the NCAA to showcase some of these smaller conferences and try to prove to people that there is a legitimate reason for the expanded field beyond simply money.

Think of it as a lovely catch-22 for the NCAAs to use. They push some of the late-season smaller conference games because they mean automatic berths under the guise that these teams are earning their way in, thus validating the 96-team field. As they do so, they make more money. Then when the tournament starts, they have a broader interest because they've added the 24 at-larges from BCS conferences, but also satisfied the little guy by making their tournament more "fair", thus getting higher ratings from both fans of the BCS conferences and fans of the smaller schools. They argue its competitive balance, but make money hand-over-fist at the same time.

[TJ]

Why would you think that?

This is all about $$$ and increasing viewership.  Adding a bunch of low-major conference champions isn't going to draw in the numbers.  (Furthermore create the incentive for conferences to "toss" their regular season champion from the conference tournament.)  Outside of possibly giving an auto bid to the Great West, I can pretty much guaranty you that all new bids will be to at-large schools, the majority of which will be from BCS conferences.

If they expand and all it does is add 28+ mediocre BCS schools to the field, then it will have gone from a terrible idea to a colossal failure.  I understand your point about money, and you're probably right, but that would be an absolute disaster in my opinion.

The best teams should get at-large bids, and after Miss St, Illinois, and VA Tech the next best teams were not in BCS Conferences.

[Chicago_inferiority_complexes]

Theoretically doubling that number isn't going to accomplish much.

You really can't emphasize this enough. We're adding 31 at-large bids to the current 35 (?) at-large bids. In other words, we're increasing the number of at-large bids by almost NINETY percent. I agree that the number of automatic bids these days suggests we need more at-large bids. No doubt about it. But NINETY percent more?

[GGGG]

If they expand and all it does is add 28+ mediocre BCS schools to the field, then it will have gone from a terrible idea to a colossal failure.  I understand your point about money, and you're probably right, but that would be an absolute disaster in my opinion.

The best teams should get at-large bids, and after Miss St, Illinois, and VA Tech the next best teams were not in BCS Conferences.

The best teams will get the bids.  That is why you won't see regular season champions from bad conferences.  A quick look at Pomeroy rankings shows that over half of the teams that would be next in line for those bids would be BCS schools and a bunch would be mid-majors.  Very few would be from smaller conferences.

[TJ]

The best teams will get the bids.  That is why you won't see regular season champions from bad conferences.  A quick look at Pomeroy rankings shows that over half of the teams that would be next in line for those bids would be BCS schools and a bunch would be mid-majors.  Very few would be from smaller conferences.

I think that for this expansion they'll simply dissolve the NIT into the NCAA Tourney, which is why I think the regular season auto-bids will be granted.  However, that's certainly not guaranteed.  We'll see soon enough...

And my last post was responding to your statement about getting majority BCS schools in - which I thought meant that they would put in teams based on school size/conference & results instead of just based on results (i.e. North Carolina in the NIT this year).  If they really do take the next 31 best teams, which undoubtedly will include many mid-majors, then we're back to just a terrible idea .