In what might be the dumbest idea since "Rocky VI," a movement has emerged to double the size of the NCAA Tournament to 128 teams.
The movement was spearheaded by the National Association of Basketball Coaches. I'm not here to cast aspersions at NABC brainstorms, but this is the same group that once passed a resolution requesting that its members be referred to, officially and publicly, as "teacher-coach." Just the term I associate with Dave Bliss, Jim Harrick and Jerry Tarkanian.
Anyway, I'm sure the NABC would love to get 326 bids and admit everyone. But somebody has to play in the NIT, right?
The plan, however, isn't going anywhere, at least not soon. The NCAA men's basketball committee decided against any kind of expansion at its annual spring meetings this week in Orlando.
The 128-team thinking hinged on the fact that more bids means more happy administrators and alums, which means more coaches keep their jobs, which was the abiding motivation of the NABC. (Motto: Nobody Does Shameless Self Interest Quite Like Us. Now Quit Asking Us About Graduation Rates.)
If you want to know how galvanizing the 128-team tournament might have been, scan the final pre-tournament RPI from the 2005-06 season. When you reach triple digits, cue the CBS tournament theme music in your head and feel your pulse pound as you envision the Drexel Dragons taking the floor in the first round.
That's 15-16 Drexel, the No. 128 team in America.
Just what March Madness needs, right? Can you imagine the electricity produced by having the Dragons, Northern Illinois (17-11, No. 127), Massachusetts (13-15, No. 126) and Siena (15-13, No. 125) as our No. 32 seeds?
The mind reels at the thought of the No. 31 seeds. Hardwood royalty, all of them.
Since Drexel conceivably could have benefited from the proposed expansion last March, I called its coach, Bruiser Flint. Asked him a simple question: Did you have an NCAA Tournament team last season?
"No, no," Flint said, after he managed to stop laughing. "We definitely weren't good enough to be in the NCAA Tournament. I'm not fooling myself."
But what if the NABC wants to fool the public? What if they want to turn the Big Dance into Woodstock and let the likes of last year's Drexel team into the tournament?
"I can understand why they might say it and want it, but I like it the way it is," Flint said, immediately becoming my favorite coach for a day. "With the NIT the way it is now [40 teams], you're putting 100 teams in the postseason. That's about one-third of Division I.
"Sixty-four teams gives it a little bit of legitimacy."
Bruiser Flint on the current NCAA tournament
"Sixty-four teams gives it a little bit of legitimacy."
Sixty-four teams gives the NCAA Tournament everything. (Sixty-five, the actual current number in the field, adds an inconvenient Tuesday game in Dayton and one more bid for a middling at-large team -- but it's only a minor annoyance.) The 64-team tournament is athletic art, as close to perfect as any sporting competition can get.
Memo to college basketball: Mess with perfection at your own peril. There is such a thing as too much of a good thing, and this would be it.
College basketball has its own little masterpiece going. The best sporting event in the world. Three weeks of variety, unpredictability, drama and excitement.
Why junk it up with all that clutter?
Da Vinci resisted the temptation to paint a fez on the Mona Lisa. The Egyptians did not sell advertising on the sides of the pyramids. There is no juice bar in the Acropolis.
There is no need for more NCAA Tournament games.
This is the George Mason Legacy at work. Schools everywhere see a mid-major that barely got in the tournament make a fairy tale Final Four run and want that same chance.
It's understandable. It's also unlikely to be duplicated anytime soon.
Better to use Mason as inspiration to work harder, not inspiration to ask for a free handout. That's how Flint, whose team played against Mason in the Colonial Athletic Association, views it.
"The year before, George Mason was 15-14 [actually 16-13] and came in fifth place [actually sixth] in our conference," Flint said. "They returned everyone from that year and were a perfect mid-major team.
"We only lost one player from last year, so we're kind of in that same boat. I see a little bit of it in how we worked out in the spring. That gives us hope. It gives everyone hope that it might happen for them."
Or you could change the rules of engagement, asking for a virtual free pass to the tournament.
In aiming for the absurd (128 teams), the NABC actually was willing to accept much less. It would have taken 68, which would create four play-in games among de facto No. 16 and 17 seeds. It would have taken 80. It would have taken 96.
It should take 65 and like it. Among the many reasons:
• Academic advisers have long held that March Madness has a bad habit of ruining grades, as teams spend extended periods of time away from the classroom at conference tournaments and then the NCAAs. So I'd like to hear the teacher-coaches explain how a fourth week of NCAA Tournament play and travel is going to help players maintain academic progress toward their degrees.
• Do you want to be the guy who draws up the bracket for this thing? Plans the sites, does the seeding, arranges the team hotels, the practice schedules, the interview schedules? It's a mammoth undertaking as it is. Doubling it for the sake of Siena and UMass is silly.
• A regular season that already is dwarfed by March would be further diminished. Billy Donovan could play his second string the entire month of February and Florida still would be assured a place in the tournament.
There already is enough sketchy basketball being played in the first round of the tourney. Who among us wants to pay NCAA tournament ticket prices to see a 16-17 first-round game? Which sponsors want to buy airtime for those games?
Building up an artificial achievement and then selling it as something legitimate is no way to save coaches' jobs. The college football equivalent is the 6-6 team going to a bad bowl game in a bad city. Everyone sees through that ruse.
(FYI: For those convinced that the zeal to make the NCAA Tournament has caused schools to lose their priorities and put too much pressure on coaches, check out Northern Arizona, No. 117 in your RPI program. The Lumberjacks won the Big Sky Conference regular-season championship this past season but lost in the league tournament and missed the Big Dance for a sixth straight season. Yet coach Mike Adras received a three-year contract extension this month.)
"You put 128 in," Flint said, "and it's like playoff hockey."
Check the ratings to see how America responded to that this year.
Despite the innumerable reasons why it should never happen, the coaches have asked the NCAA to examine tournament expansion. Northern Illinois coach Rob Judson, a likeable guy whose team could have been on the field-of-128 bubble, represented the Mid-American Conference on the NABC committee that passed the proposal.
"For the non-BCS leagues, I think expansion would be very exciting and beneficial," Judson said.
I asked Judson the same question I asked Flint: Was your team an NCAA Tournament team?
"Ohhhh," Judson said, hemming for a minute, then hawing. "We were close. We were not one of 64. With expansion, now we can make a good case."
"I don't know that you'd find a coach that wouldn't be supportive of it."
Mr. Judson, meet Mr. Flint. My new favorite college basketball coach.
Pat Forde is a senior writer for ESPN.com. He can be reached at ESPN4D@aol.com.