What would have happened if the Syracuse Orange were in the NCAA Tournament in 2017? Would there have been another magical Sweet 16 run in them?
It doesn’t really matter, but should the ACC have its way, we’ll be talking about the first-four-out-teams of years past quite often.
According to a report across several sporting sites, the Atlantic Coast Conference wants to expand the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament by four teams, move back the three-point line, widen the lane and reset the shot clock to 20 seconds after an offensive rebound.
Now, that’s a lot of potential changes, but these things are being discussed not just by the conference but in national conversation.
John Cassillo with thecomeback.com broke down what a 72-team tournament field would have looked like from 2011-17, after ESPN’s Joe Lunardi first brought up the idea last summer. Not surprisingly, it helps out previously NIT-bound squads like the Syracuse Orange.
First, the whys: Lunardi suggested this as a way of getting more mid-major teams into the tournament, as there’s a pretty clear bias on selection committees to favor major conferences or names over actual bodies of work in close calls.
In Cassillo’s 2017 breakdown, you see that on the whole, it’s actually bigger conferences getting the extra bids over these types of schools more often than not.
Adding four more teams isn’t going to change the existing bias, it’s just going to give the committee more slots to exercise that bias, hence conferences like the ACC getting to flaunt more postseason success.
As for how this would be implemented? ACC Commissioner John Swoffard thinks that there should be two regional First Fours.
“The idea of having two First Fours, if you will, maybe geographic,” he said. “That’s such a quick turnaround. You could have one maybe in Dayton and one in the western part of the states. But we will be proposing that.”
I’m not sure if I love this or hate this.
On the one hand, more programs are competitive than ever, and rewarding more students for on-court success seems natural. On the other hand, this is very clearly the NCAA and conferences realizing an opportunity for more ticket sales and television revenue, capitalizing on the draw that is March Madness, regardless of the other motives being thrown out.
Tune into the RO Sports Show at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday across all the Richmond Observer platforms where myself and the ROSS crew will continue this discussion about the NCAA potentially expanding the tournament, as well as other proposed changes put forth by the ACC.
