June 29, 2006

Provo, UT (CSTV U-WIRE) -- I remember March 1995 like it was yesterday. Of course I was 11 then, but I remember. It was filled with heartache and pain. On one day during the first week of March Madness, I opened the front door of my house. My brothers were laughing at me, and I knew something had gone wrong. It had. Villanova, my team that I picked to go all the way, had lost to No.14 seed Old Dominion 89-81. My bracket was ruined in the first week of games.

A few days later, after still sulking in my Villanova despair, my heartache got worse. My home state team, Missouri, lost to No.1 UCLA 75-74 in the second round. With less than five seconds left, UCLA point guard Tyus Edny went coast-to-coast, making a layup as time expired.

So why am I talking about March Madness in June?

The NCAA tournament committee convenes this week to discuss possible changes in the number of invitations.

"They'd [coaches] love to see the tournament double to 128," Jim Haney, executive director of the National Association of Basketball Coaches, told the Associated Press. "It's based on several things. First, there are a lot of good teams worthy of making the NCAA field, and second, the size of 64 or 65 has been in place for a number of years."

NCAA basketball movement remains quite conservative. The last major change came in 1985 when the committee decided to increase the number of teams from 53 teams to 64. Then back in 2001, the committee decided to add a 65th team to the standard 64 for a play-in game, where the winner has the privilege of getting worked over by a No.1 seed.

The main reason for the change in teams invited to the "Big Dance" is because the number of Division I basketball schools has increased from 282 in 1985 to 334 today. Following their conservative past, if the change does occur it will be between 68-80 teams.

Another catalyst for this change is George Mason, who was one of the bubble teams that made it into the tournament. Organizers and sports fans were glad too because George Mason, a No.11 seed, made it all the way to the Final Four, including a win against tournament favorite Connecticut. George Mason's success had a lot to do with both prominent programs losing underclassmen at a greater rate and fewer scholarships being awarded. Those changes helped mid-major teams close the competition gap.

The most conservative change possible, besides no change at all, is to increase the number of teams to 68. These extra teams could play in Davidson, Ohio where the current play-in game is held. The winners of these games would take on a No.1 seed.

The change to 80 teams would mean that there would be another bracket altogether, bringing the total number of brackets to 5. This would be complicated when trying to figure out which bracket winners play each other. Not to mention it will no longer be the Final Four but the Final Five. It just doesn't sound right. Maybe the Fab Five would work.

Then of course there is the 128-team scenario. This has about as much chance of getting passed as the 49ers winning the Super Bowl with Alex Smith at quarterback.

This last scenario is for all math geeks out there. To keep the tournament proportional to the number of teams invited to the tournament and total number of teams in Division I. at the time of the 1985 change, then the number of teams should be 76.

Speaking of math, all of you who are curious about what having 80 teams would do to your odds of guessing them all right, the new odds of picking all the games right is 1 in 604 sextillion. To put those odds into perspective, the odds of dating a supermodel is 1 in 88,000 (That means I still have a chance to date Heidi Klum) and the odds of having a meteor landing on your house is 1 in 182 trillion.

Come this weekend, sportsfans will find out how many more teams will be added to March Madness, if any at all. My money is on 68.

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