March Madness and the Women’s tournament have been expanded.
Gamblers must be happy. Some TV network executives must be happy and maybe some players are happy as the National Collegiate Athletic Association has expanded its Men’s and Women’s College Basketball Tournament to include 76 teams in the two competitions. Six men’s games will be played on a Tuesday and a Wednesday following the regular season and conference tournaments in the expanded format with three Tuesday games in Dayton, Ohio and three games somewhere else on Wednesday. Six women’s games will be played on a Wednesday and a Thursday in the expanded format. Those games will be played on college campuses. After the winners emerge, there will be 64 teams that will play over the weekend that will be whittled down to 16. Then there will be the round of eight and those winners will be in the Final Four.
“From my point of view, the more teams we can get into the tournament and make it work logistically and mathematically, the better,” NCAA Commission Charlie Baker said in February. “It gives more kids the opportunity to experience that.” What Baker didn’t say is that the extra six men’s and six women’s games will bring more revenue to NCAA member schools. Revenue is the name of the game. Maximize revenue streams is Baker’s number one job. But college officials don’t want to talk about the additional revenues streams from television, marketing partners and people attending games. They would rather talk of some sort of legacy. “March Madness is the best postseason in all of sports, and this new format will continue that legacy by producing even more compelling games for fans and student-athletes,” said Division I Men’s Basketball Committee chair Keith Gill, commissioner of the Sun Belt Conference. March Madness is all about money and if college sports officials say it isn’t. That’s not being truthful.
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