Duke’s Jay Bilas talks about the recent news that the NCAA might expand the tournament to 96 teams, his reservations of doing it and the effect it would have on March Madness (run time is 4:14; transcript below the jump).
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Lost Lettermen: This is Jose Bosch from LostLettermen.com and I’m joined by Duke’s Jay Bilas, a member of the 1986 Final Four team and currently a college basketball analyst for ESPN. Jay thanks for joining us.
News came out today that the NCAA is considering of expanding the tournament from 64 or 65 to 96 teams. Do you think it’s a situation where if it’s not broke don’t fix it? Or do you think the NCAA should really look into possibly expanding the tournament?
Jay Bilas: Looking into it is fine. It’s always good to have more information rather than less. So exploring it and making an informed decision is really smart. I have no problem with that.
I am kind of a, “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it” guy. But the times in the past where the tournament’s been expanded it was broken. In the ’70s when only one team per conference could go to the NCAA Tournament and compete for the national championship. It was by definition broken because you didn’t have your best teams competing.
It’s not broken now. The best teams are competing. All we’re really saying is, “Let’s add some more at the end and would that be tragic?” Of course not. It wouldn’t be bad. It just wouldn’t be in the best interest of the best teams. I mean, this is the national championship; it’s not a feel good event for more people. We shouldn’t aspire to make more people feel good. We should aspire to do what’s right for the national championship and I don’t think expanding is the right thing but at the same time … it depends on why we’re doing it.
If we’re doing it for more money, that’s not a bad thing. These schools can do really good things with more money. But if it’s just to give more kids the experience of playing in the NCAA Tournament, we’re always going to want to add more for that reason. I don’t think that’s a good enough reason to get in the way of the best teams competing for the national championship.
LL: Even if the NCAA decides that they want to go forward with this because some schools can make more money and do good things with the money, do they risk diluting the talent pool in the NCAA Tournament and not having as good a product as it’s been for so many years?
JB: I don’t think it would be dilution because you’re just adding more kind of average teams and I don’t think they’d be any better than average, honestly. I think it would be like some of the bowl games you get in the first few bowl games that are played. They’re not played by really good teams, frankly. They’re played by middling teams. You’d just be adding more middling teams.
The problem I have with it is I don’t think we should be doing that and put banana peels in the way of the best teams. How does that help North Carolina?
If we were keeping out teams that had legitimate chances to win the national championship, that would be fine. But the best we could say about the teams that would be added would be, “Hey, they might be able to win a game in the tournament,” or “They could win a game or two.” That’s not good enough.
If we’re not putting teams into the tournament that have a legitimate shot to compete successfully for the national championship, then we’re just adding phony layers on to it and I don’t think that’s appropriate.
LL: Knowing how the NCAA can be with its decisions, do you think that this is something that they’re going to make a decision with within the next couple of years or do you think that by this summer we could find out that the next tournament might expanded?
JB: I don’t know. I think it’s perfectly appropriate that they explore all their options. I think that’s just smart business. But I don’t know if they can strike a deal with somebody. Whether expansion comes next year or the year after, I have no idea.
I don’t think it would be the end of the world either way. We’d roll with it and things would be terrific either way.
That tournament is almost impossible to screw up; despite our best efforts to do it. It’s such a great event I just can’t imagine that even if you went to 96 that it would be anything other than the best event out there. Would it be as good as it was before? I don’t know. But it would still be the best event going in sports.
LL: Well Jay thank you very much, I really appreciate taking the time out of your day to speak with us and have fun with the rest of the college basketball season.
JB: Hey, thank you for having me. Nice of you to call.
Got a question or comment? E-mail him here
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