the biggest dealbreaker was the student-athletes. Female student-athletes were against it by a 3 to 1 margin when surveyed in 2019. Male student athletes supported it like 9 to 1. Although I think many coaches in favor of it pre-covid are against it or at least on the fence post covid. It’s completely off the table on women’s side now… but hopefully we get an expanded model by 2025.
I took a look at the 2022 NCAA Tournament selection process in relation to the possibility of increasing the field to 96 teams. Of the teams my system saw as candidates for at large positions that did not get selected, here is how they fell out in terms of their conferences: American 1 Atlantic Sun 1 Atlantic Ten 1 Big Ten 2 Big Twelve 1 Colonial 2 Pac Twelve 2 SEC 2 Summit 1 If all of the additional 32 teams participating in the Tournament were at large, I think it is very safe to assume these 13 teams would have been at large selections. In the actual field of 64 teams, the non-Power 5 conferences with at large teams already in the field were: American 1 Big East 1 Ivy League 1 WAC 1 West Coast 2 If all of the additional teams were selected through the at large process, there would be another 19 at large slots open, for the Committee to fill. Given the above, it appears to me there would be significant opportunities for more deserving teams from non-Power 5 conferences to get into the Tournament, if they would schedule appropriately, meaning scheduling signifcant numbers of strong non-conference opponents and getting some good results against them. This, of course, means taking the risk of their having poorer than historic records due to playing more difficult schedules. Given this, from my perspective, having all additional slots be at large would make for a far better Tournament, rather than having an additional bunch of Automatic Qualifiers who are in the Tournament regardless of how they compare to the entire field of teams competing to get in.
ncaa wants student athlete experience. Give every conference 2 auto bids. Still gives you 30 at larges to choose from. Then those all go to the power schools. Still will find the same championship teams in the final 8 teams anyway. Those bottom teams will get to meet the big dogs and get bumped in first round anyway like it is now. Or have them play in to advance. Let’s just not give all the extra bids to all the power schools just because the play in a power conf.
More numbers related to the question whether each conference should have two Automatic Qualifiers in a 96 team bracket: Since 2010, the following conferences have won no games in the NCAA Tournament (based on treating all teams as in their current conferences): America East Big Sky Big South Metro Atlantic Southland Southwestern The following additional conferences never have gotten past the second round: Atlantic Sun Colonial Horizon Mid American Missouri Valley Ohio Valley Patriot Southern Sun Belt It seems reasonable to think that the #2 team in all of these conferences almost always would not be competitive in the NCAA Tournament. And, if one of them would be competitive in a particular year, it seems likely that would get an at large position with the field expanded to 96 and the 0.500 minimum winning percentage requirement remaining in effect.
Institute a rule that you have to be above .500 in conference play to gain an at large bid to the NCAA tournament.
I’d be interested in seeing something where you took these 15 conferences and maybe the WAC, Mountain West, and CUSA as a group of 18 and added something where 6 at-larges had to go to schools from that group. I think 24 spots for those leagues would potentially offer an opportunity to expand the student athlete experience while not watering down the product like 36 spots might. Because who knows, maybe the 2nd Patriot League team might actually knock off the 7th place Big 12 team in that play in round every once in a while.
Lots of interesting speculation and calculation here... My understanding (and someone please correct me if I am wrong) is that the process of deciding on how much to expand etc. will be conducted by a committee which theoretically represents the the sport and various conferences. In other words this will not be decided by NCAA administrators or the president as it were. If so, can we expect a pretty good plan when all is said and done? (Or at least a workable one.)
@Soccerguy1022 Because they're expanding the field from 32 to 48 teams and possibly going to have them in groups of 3 instead of 4. The knockout stage would expand to 32 teams, meaning 2 teams out of every 3-team group would advance. None of these three things are good for the overall level of play at the tournament. Nothing to do with it being in the U.S., and don't get me wrong - I'll still go to as many games as I can.
That is my understanding too. I would be very surprised if there were an expansion of the field and a change in the Automatic Qualifier policy so that two teams from each conference are AQs. I likewise would be surprised if there were a rule requiring that some additional teams come from non-Power 5 conferences (although I think some almost certainly would come from non-Power 5 conferences even without such a rule). The reason for this is embedded in NCAA policy. That policy says that NCAA tournaments are to be for the best teams or, phrased differently, for the most highly qualified teams (which is a little more ambiguous), or, phrased differently, for the teams whose performances have earned them the opportunity to compete (which likewise is a little more ambiguous). Further, the underlying factors that must determine participation are won-loss record and strength of schedule. These two factors are broken down to subfactors, but those are the driving factors. These are NCAA policies, so any committee sport-specific decisions must be consistent with them. The current Automatic Qualifier rule is an exception to the underlying selection policies. It adds excitement to the regular season, especially for weaker conferences, but it also results in some non-competitive teams playing in the Tournament. A change in the Automatic Qualifier rule, as I read the NCAA requirements, would require a high level NCAA decision and currently could not be a committee-by-committee decision. If there is an expansion but the AQs continue to be limited to one per conference, the non-conference scheduling approaches for teams with NCAA Tournament aspirations would remain the same as they are now. Teams from strong conferences that are mid-level in their conferences need to be sure to schedule so as to meet the 0.500 requirement, but still need to get some good results against Top 50 opponents. Teams from weaker conferences that are upper level in their conferences need to be sure to schedule enough Top 50 opponents to get some good results against them. For teams from the weaker conferences, this should not be a problem in terms of availability of opponents since upper level teams from mid-majors are desirable opponents from an RPI perspective. The real issue for non-Power 5 conferences, I think, is whether their upper level teams are willing to schedule significant numbers of potentially Top 50 non-conference opponents (including investing the travel $$ that would go with home-away contracts). If they are willing to do this, then their results will demonstrate whether they do or do not deserve to be in the Tournament. If they are not willing to do it, then it seems to me it is fair to say they do not deserve to be in the Tournament. This may seem harsh, but it is based on decisions the schools themselves have made. This information on how teams need to schedule to have a chance of getting into the Tournament is publicly available and now is pretty well known among the coaches. If you look at the non-Power 5 conferences that get multiple teams into the Tournament with some frequency, you will see that their upper level teams with Tournament aspirations set their schedules as I have described. Thus if you see what you think is a strong team from a mid-major that has not gotten into the Tournament, you almost certainly are seeing one of two things: (1) The team has scheduled an appropriate number of Top 50 non-conference opponents but has not gotten significant good results against them or (2) The team has a scheduling pattern that does not include scheduling significant numbers of Top 50 non-conference opponents. In other words, it is the team’s own doing that has kept it out of the Tournament. I think someone mentioned Army in 2022 as a team that might be an example of a team that would have been a good candidate for the Tournament. It won the Patriot League regular season but lost in the finals of the conference tournament on PKs. If you look at its schedule, it played one Top 50 team, Auburn ranked #50, to whom it lost (and which did not itself get into the Tournament). Thus although it is very tough for its players to come that close to getting in as an Automatic Qualifier, they simply did not schedule difficult enough opponents to allow them to show that they deserved on merit to be in the Tournament. The alternative approaches fundamentally say that filling at least a good number of the added positions should not be based on merit. That is an ok position, but it would require a high level NCAA policy decision.
I talked to a competition committee member who thought chances were pretty high of women’s soccer going to a 90 team tournament by 2025. Further, the committee member thought the tournament would expand before that with 48 seeded teams. I’m not sure how that would work with less than 96 teams. Possibly teams past the first 48 would have play-in games. Just a guess. Discussions are ongoing this month as committee membership turns over.
If this is correct, I can imagine an 80 team tournament. It would look like a typical 64 team bracket, but with a further play in round. The play in round would have 32 teams. The logical place for them to be playing in would be in order to play the #1 through #4 seeds in the round of 64. For the teams first playing in the round of 64, it probably would be 4 #1s, #2s, #3s, #4s, #5s, #6s, #7s, #8s (all of which we had this year), #9s, #10s, #11s, and #12s. Anything that seeds more teams is good, in my opinion. It makes the Tournament more of a national competition, rather than a regional competition feeding into a national final few rounds. The next step would be to not have the pods of four and seed them all in order. I am pretty sure part of the impetus for this was the experience in the Covid-affected 2020 year when all 48 teams in the Tournament played in a common location and all were seeded. The feedback from this was that having all teams seeded was great.