ESPN was doing a piece on the efforts to expand the NCAA Tournament (which I have ton of thoughts about for a later rant – or several rants).

It looks like they have been looking at options to expand to 72, 76 or 80 teams – and according to the article on ESPN, both the Big 12 and SEC commissioners have offered expansion options.

But Greg Sankey was quoted in the article saying this. “That just tells you that the bandwidth inside the top 50 is highly competitive. We are giving away highly competitive opportunities for automatic qualifiers, and I think that pressure is going to rise as we have more competitive basketball leagues at the top end because of expansion.”

While I appreciate that his statements have a decent amount of truth in them, they are very self-serving and it is clear he is trying to simply get a larger share of the revenues.

His comments about expansion are probably accurate. If you look at the Big 12, they added teams like Houston and BYU – and they did well in the conference as more teams started falling to 10-8 or 9-9 in the conference, and yet when there is only 36 at large bids, the reality is you can’t give the Big 12 2 more bids because they got better. You are still likely looking at the 6-8 spots they get. So they have gotten better and the number of spots available really don’t change. The SEC is going to be a lot tougher next season when they add Texas and Oklahoma.

That being said, I don’t feel any sympathy for them – the SEC knew what they were doing and the money it was worth to add those two schools. I don’t feel that it is necessary to take money away from the other conferences in basketball because the SEC wants all the football money.

The part that really rubbed me wrong (and the rest of the college basketball world) is the statement of giving away bids to automatic qualifiers. There is a little bit of truth here. UConn beat Stetson by 39 points. Odds are, if St. John’s, Seton Hall or Providence was given that spot, they would have been closer to making it a competitive game – so you don’t have the top 68 teams.

But here is the problem with that – those teams played their way in by claiming their conference’s title. We could probably debate the wisdom of having a end-of-season week long tournament deciding that bid over the 16-20 games the teams played against each other. But the path was clear – and they earned their spot. And these one-bid conferences simply don’t get the opportunities. If I follow Sankey’s advice, I never see an upset by FDU or Princeton, or St. Peter’s. I also probably lose out on the upsets by Duquesne, Grand Canyon and James Madison this year. When the mid-majors don’t get an opportunity outside of a rare road game to play, how do we know which 25-7 team is good enough to compete. The automatic bids need to be there – you can’t leave a conference out of the championship.

Well – there is an irony here. After Sankey made his comments, only 4 protected seeds did not make it to the Sweet 16. #4 Kansas was done in by injuries – still hung on to win against Samford, and even stayed close to Gonzaga for a half before the lack of players caught up to them. #3 Baylor had no problems in the first round but were upset by Clemson in the second round – while an upset, a 6 seed upsetting a 3 seed isn’t a huge shock.

So that leaves two teams who lost in the first round. where the Ivy League champion Yale knocked off 4 seed Auburn and the Horizon champion Oakland knocked off 3 seed Kentucky. Two of the best teams in the SEC getting knocked out by the types of teams that Greg Sankey was complaining about taking away opportunities to his conference.

Well – it seems like those teams belong based on their victories this year. It is sad that they would even need to make that case – the Cinderella upsets are some of the best things about March (well – when they don’t happen to the school you are rooting for).

And lets be fair, Tennessee and Alabama are doing just fine in the Sweet 16, and both have impressive offensive teams that could surprise everyone and win the whole thing.

But you have to admit that there was a little bit of karma that the two biggest upsets in this year’s tournament happened to the league who had their commissioner basically say that 8 of the 68 spots available wasn’t enough.