Count ESPN "bracketologist" Joe Lunardi among those against expanding the NCAA Tournament.The man who turned a hobby into a respected avocation with spot-on analysis and prognostication about the annual men's basketball tournament believes the existing 65-team approach works quite well.
"There's no good basketball reason to do it, to expand the tournament -- at least dramatically," Lunardi told reporters on an conference call this week. "By that I mean no team with a realistic chance to win the national championship is being excluded by the current system."
He said some good teams do miss the tournament, but not any team that has the potential to win numerous games and contend for the crown. "I've never heard that argument," he said.
Still, Lunardi knows what drives any such decision, and he knows what just might happen. While the colleges and universities that comprise the NCAA are technically non-profit entities, the NCAA itself and the networks that would televise the event are not. Plus, the annual men's basktball tournament provides nearly 90 percent of the NCAA's annual revenue.
"Whatever decision is made is going to be for business reasons," Lunardi said. "The business people making the decision are going to make a plus-minus evaluation."
While Lunardi thinks those making the decision know that expanding the tournament would diminish the regular season and make late-season games and conference tournaments anticlimactic, he believes some expansion will happen. "It's coming sooner rather than later," he said, although he was not sure it would move to as many as 96 games.
He's adamantly against such a major expansion, too.
"My only wish is that they consider my sleeping habits. I do lie awake at night dividing 65 teams from 66," he said, insisting that the difference between the last team in and first team out is significant in the current format. He does not believe much of a difference would exist between the 96th team and the next team that misses in an expanded tournament, though. Because of that fine line, a line for a team that almost certainly would lose in first round, Lunardi thinks the process of selecting the final team would be "a pain in the ass." He added, "I don't think the world will be any better off if we don't have 13 Big East teams in the tournament."