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96 Teams is March Madness

Posted by BrickHorn on March 21st, 2010 under Basketball

It appears the NCAA intends to expand its annual basketball tournament to a ludicrous 96 teams.  Nearly 100 teams, competing in a single-elimination tournament to crown a champion.  March Madness, indeed.

Money is obviously the motivating factor here.  The NCAA makes cash hand-over-fist during tournament time, and there’s a certain simple-minded economic logic behind expansion.  More teams = more games = more television time = more $$$ to support the NCAA’s annual Bob Stoops wrist-slapping endeavors.

Of course, this logic ignores the psychological effects of adding more teams to the tournament. The most obvious effect is that casual fans are less likely to watch the 32 first-round games between seeds 9-24, which, in theory, should not include even a single team from the national Top 25.  What’s more, in the 25-year history of the 64-team field, no team seeded lower than eighth has ever made the finals, much less won the national championship.  32 games, zero big names, zero chance that any team involved in the opening round will be crowned champ.  How’s that for intrigue?

My brain has been trained to think like a lawyer, but in my heart – my ice-cold, calculating, emotionless heart – I remain an engineer.  So I have a deep-seated desire for shit to make sense.  Expansion to 96 teams makes no sense whatsoever, assuming the point of the tournament is to allow teams to determine a champion “on the court.”  The 64-team tournament is already bloated beyond necessity for this task.  Adding another 32 teams only compounds the issue, and will degrade the prestige that, in my opinion, should accompany all post-season playoffs.

The statistics support my view:

  • Since 1985, no 16-seed has ever won a game in the tournament.  They are 0-100 over that time.

  • No 15-seed has ever made the Sweet Sixteen.  15-seeds are 4-100 over the history of the tournament.

  • No team seeded in the lower quartile (seeds 13-16) has ever made the Elite Eight.

  • Seeds 13-16 are, collectively, 46-400 over the history of the tournament, for a whopping 10% winning percentage.

  • No team seeded in the lower half (seeds 9-16) has ever made the Finals.

  • Seeds 9-16 are, collectively, 268-800 over the history of the tournament, for a 25% winning percentage.

  • 88% of Final Four participants, 90% of NCAA finalists and 92% of champions were seeded 1-4.

  • 66% of Final Four participants, 70% of NCAA finalists and 76% of NCAA champions were seeded 1 or 2.

  • Only 2% of Final Four participants and 0% of NCAA finalists or champions were seeded lower than eight.

The graph below shows the participation at each round of the 64-team tournament, broken down by seed group:

ncaa tourney

Basically, the tournament is dominated by the top 16 teams, and the championship is dominated by the top eight.  The occasional 5-8 seed slips into the last couple of rounds.  In my opinion, this occurs often enough – on average, a 5-8 seed will participate in a Final Four once every 2-3 years, make the Finals every 5 years and win the whole enchilada once every 12 years or so – to add interest to the tournament and justify a 32-team field.  But the inclusion of a sub-8 seed team in the Final Four is so rare (it’s only happened TWICE in 25 years) that these teams are rationally viewed as nothing more than cannon fodder for the big boys and, of more concern, potential sources of error in crowning the best team as “champion.”

No college team is perfect, and the potential for the rare, but statistically inevitable, upset is always present.  In a single-elimination tournament, statistical anomalies lead to error.  The regular season does a good job of sorting out the wheat from the chaff – the best teams are those that played quality schedules and emerged with the best records.  They aren’t invincible, and might occasionally lose to a lesser team due to circumstances.  But, over the long term, they can be expected to win a lot more than they lose. 

A single-elimination format denies us the opportunity to see the long-term outcome by establishing the rule that “early loss = not best team.”  To some degree, this is a necessary evil (sorry Kansas).  It’s impossible for all college teams to play each other college team a statistically-significant number of times.  So, the end of year tournament is a decent way to compare the teams who had the most regular season success.  But a tournament should not simply ignore the regular season results; it ought to use them wisely, to identify the true contenders for the title of “best team in the nation.”

The 64-team field already includes at least 32 (and perhaps more) pretenders every year.  These unworthy teams are mere sources of error and confusion, with no real chance to win the tournament.  Does anyone believe that a post-season championship playoff should be so large that half (or 67%) of the participants have no real hope to win?

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30 Responses

  1. Newy25 said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 4:05 am

    It also ignores a big reason the casual fan gets involved – brackets. Take away the casual fan’s interest in filling out one and that is equivalent to eliminating fantasy football in the NFL.

  2. tim beam said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 4:49 am

    I know this is sacrilege, and that should this happen I would probably end up hating it, but this doesn’t really bother me. And I’m not an “every kid deserves a medal” type of dude. But I do think that schools like Wichita State and Illinois State make it in this year if the number is 96. I think William and Mary is in, I think UAB is in, I think Coastal Carolina is in.

    Perhaps I’m wildly mistaken and preference again would go the BCS Conference schools. But if going to 96 means we’re looking at adding 10 – 15 mid majors to this thing, I would say that I am in favor of that idea.

  3. Craw Force One said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 5:24 am

    96 teams would be the death of the NIT. Not that it was good or anything but its fun to watch when there are no tournament games on.

  4. Bob in Houston said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 6:24 am

    Brick: The chances of a 16 seed beating a one now will go up quite a bit. The teams in the last quartile that were not at-larges, will most likely, still populate the bottom four rows.

    We’ll have to recalibrate what it means to make the NCAA tournament now, but at least the best 64 have a fighting to be in the final 64.

  5. Bob in Houston said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 6:25 am

    fighting “chance”, he meant.

  6. Pangloss said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 6:32 am

    William & Mary beat Wake Forest in Winston-Salem….

  7. Currently in Rehab said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 6:47 am

    No Child Left Behind

  8. BrickHorn said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 6:54 am

    Bob,

    The chances of a 16 seed beating a one now will go up quite a bit. The teams in the last quartile that were not at-larges, will most likely, still populate the bottom four rows.

    That’s true. But I doubt it will be too significant an increase. And, in any case, the new 13-16 rung will still be lesser teams than the current 9-12s, which have had very little success in the tournament historically.

  9. srr50 said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 6:57 am

    Yes this expansion is about money. It is also about the tournament moving to cable.

    With 32 teams getting first-round byes, the first two days of play will essentially be a ramped up NIT — but with the tournament in all likelyhood moving to cable for at least a portion of the event, those extra games will be advertised at a discount, since there will be the dual revenue system of advertising dollars plus subscription fees already in place.

    So the first week will be a Tuesday through Sunday event rather than a Thursday through Sunday schedule. Lots of teams will get to say they took part in March Madness, advertisers will get added on value for the Tuesday-Wednesday matchups, and ESPN gets more content.

    It’s gonna happen.

  10. uthookem said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 7:21 am

    We’re going to have the shrink the font on all of the brackets in order to fit them onto one page.

  11. milksteak said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 8:20 am

    The NCAA seems to have a healthy sense of irony in that they realize how big of a success the basketball tournament is, but then proclaim the virtues of the BCS system in football. If the basketball tournament is doing so well that adding more teams seems like a good idea, how on earth is a 2 team tournament a good idea in post-season football?

  12. Bob in Houston said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 8:46 am

    Writing carefully, I don’t think the NCAA has talked about the BCS being a great thing.

  13. T said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 8:52 am

    Losers bracket if they want more games. Why would the likelihood go up that a 16 would beat a 1?

  14. 06_UT said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 9:00 am

    Won’t this interfere too much with the student athletes’ classes? We know that the football players can only handle one game a week (on the weekend) for 14 weeks max. I don’t know how the basketball players manage to handle 2 games a week for ~19+ weeks, with one occuring during the middle of the week. Maybe it is because they play some of those games during the winter break…The basketball population must have a higher overall IQ to handle this. However, adding all of these extra games, a week after each school having 2-4 games for conference tournaments, will cut in to their studying time too much to do well in under water basket weaving.

  15. 06_UT said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 9:05 am

    How would they do seeding? I would assume 8 would play 24. Who would the winneplay? I would think the 1 seeds would play the winner of 16vs17?

  16. srr50 said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 9:06 am

    If the basketball tournament is doing so well that adding more teams seems like a good idea, how on earth is a 2 team tournament a good idea in post-season football?

    The NCAA makes 90% of its revenue off of March Madness — they don’t make a dime off of the BCS.

    When (if) all parties involved in college football ever figure out how to divide the money, that’s when you will see a playoff.

  17. Bob in Houston said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 9:25 am

    T: The reason that 16s will have a better chance is because the current 14-16 seeds will (for the most part) be stuck in the 22-24 holes in the 96-team bracket — in any event, not 16.

    The current play-in game (essentially a 16-17) will be between two decent teams. Think, say, the three and four seeds of the NIT… Dayton, Kent State, Memphis, Seton Hall, Tech (I know, a five), Wichita State, UConn, UNC, South Florida. Those teams have a much better chance of advancing against a one than UAPB or Winthrop did.

    06: 9 vs. 24, 10 v. 23, 11 v. 22, etc., down to 16 v. 17. Then it’s like what we have, 16-17 winner plays 1, 15-18 winner plays 2… up to 9-24 winner playing 8. In this setup, the 9-11 seeds have all the pressure in the first round.

  18. Caradoc said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 9:33 am

    Just add 4 more games and you can expand the field to 1024. That ought to accommodate every college team in the country.

  19. Craig Biggio's Dirty Uniform said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 10:33 am

    Great analysis. You stated the obvious and most salient point in your intro thesis paragraph-The tournament is not about crowning a champion, cinderalla stories or allowing 234 teams to compete for fairness sake. It’s about money plain and simple. By expanding as they have dine in the past the NCAA is reminding us that college basketball is about money. Just money.

  20. Patrick Bateman said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 10:34 am

    Having a larger amount of teams, especially low seeds has never been about their opportunity to win the tournament. It’s a reward for a season well played as well as a way to promote interest in these schools and players. When George Mason went to the Final Four a few years ago, they might as well won back to back championships. It’s every small school’s dream and will be remembered as much as the winner of the 2004 championship. Who was that again? UConn. But most people won’t remember, but they’ll remember that George Mason made a Final Four because the media will remind them.

    FTR, I’m not in favor of expanding to 96 teams, but let’s not kid ourselves that this about allowing more teams the opportunity to win the tourney. Brackets got bigger, advertising revenue got bigger, and cable TV is very happy. It Old Yeller’s the NIT which has needed it for a long time….

  21. T said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 11:08 am

    I understand that a 16 seed has a good chance of beating a 17, and thus winning the first round game in a 96 team format, but there’s no better chance that the 16 (or 17) would then beat the 1. So still no point in including more than 64 (or 32 for that matter) except $.

  22. T said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 11:11 am

    Oh I see what you are saying. The current “last teams out” are better than the current aq’s in the 16 spot

  23. GiordanoBruno said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 11:22 am

    I’m confused. Are you saying that at heart a lawyer is not ice-cold, calculating, and emotionless?

  24. David Stern and Gary Bettman say: said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 11:24 am

    Hell, let all 347 Division 1 teams in.

  25. A Magician named GOB said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 11:44 am

    It will be interesting to see how this affects the coaches. My understanding is that most of them are in favor of the expansion which strikes me as myopic. Miss the tournament for one year (injuries, bad luck, etc) and you’re done.

    Secondly, will this have an effect on conference tourneys? The expansion would make them less important, but that might not be why people watch/attend them anyways.

  26. Bob in Houston said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 1:04 pm

    I foresee changes coming there. If the NCAA insists on starting this tournament on Tuesday, no bubble team in a BCS league is going to want to play its last conference tournament game on a Saturday or a Sunday before a Tuesday NCAA game.

  27. ETERNAL GLORY said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 3:04 pm

    Off topic,

    ” in my heart – my ice-cold, calculating, emotionless heart – I remain an engineer. So I have a deep-seated desire for shit to make sense.”

    Is a great quote,

    /Trained MBA, yet UG engineer at heart

  28. Barking Carnival — Blog — What to do with Aaron Williamse said:

    March 22nd, 2010 at 8:26 pm

    [...] had a nice piece on the move to a 96 team tournament. I agree entirely with his points, introducing more teams into [...]

  29. Barking Carnival — Blog — March Madness: Has Cinderella Overstayed Her Welcome? said:

    March 24th, 2010 at 9:21 am

    [...] Mason reached the Final Four, ratings were the lowest they have been this decade (of course this is the exception that proves the rule). The fear this year is that so many casual fans have had their office pool brackets blown up, so [...]

  30. frank sellout said:

    April 14th, 2010 at 10:08 am

    This is clearly about money but what no one is talking about is that this is the NCAA’s way of marginalizing small conference teams, so that a 16 seed team can now be a 20 or lower. What you will see is the Big East now sending 10-12 teams, the Big 12 sending 9 or 10 and the Big Ten sending 7 or 8. If the the Tourney had 96 teams this year then I bet you North Carolina would have been in despite their lousy year. It’s all about big conferences, big schools and big money, screw the little guys.

    P.S. The NCAA owns the N.I.T. touney, so it’s toast.

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