Expansion blues

 Comes now the news that the New York Yankees, those old stick-in-the-muds, are easing their no-facial-hair rule, so I guess it's not really 1955 after all -- or even 1895, which is the direction the confederacy of dunces in Washington seems to be taking us these days.

No, it's definitely 2025 out here in America, and I know this because the NCAA is seriously considering expanding its men's basketball tournament to 76 teams. That's eight more beyond the 68 that are already in the field, which are four more than the ideal, which was the 64-team tournament.

I guess madness really does beget more madness -- or in this case, more Madness. Also, greed. Greed begets more greed, too.

Which is the only explanation that makes any sense for expanding a tournament that's already been expanded too much already, at least according to cranky geezers like me. Sixty-four teams was perfect. Sixty-four put the spotlight squarely on the first four days of Da Tournament, which are the four days that sell the whole schmear. 

Sixty-eight?

Well, now we've got this weird prelude over Dayton, which everyone considers just that -- a weird prelude -- no matter how hard the NCAA and the teevees that pay to carry their water try to make it otherwise. They can call it the First Four until their larynxes give out, but most of America still thinks the show doesn't really begin until First Thursday.

Of course, the NCAA is a monopoly run by two or three or four mega-conferences now, and the mega-conferences are an endlessly grasping bunch. The more dough they have, the more dough they want. Which is why Greg Sankey, the commissioner of the SEC, griped thusly last year: "We are giving away highly competitive opportunities for automatic qualifiers (from smaller leagues), and I think that pressure is going to rise as we have more competitive basketball leagues at the top end because of (conference) expansion ..."

In other words: Fewer Coastal Carolinas and Bucknells, more SEC and Big Ten bottom feeders.

Uh ... no. No, no, no.

At 68 teams, there are likely already too many mega-conference cruds in the field, it says here. Expanding the field to 76 or 80 or whatever only means there'll be more. It means a whole pile of yawn-inducing first-round matchups between, say, 16-12 Vanderbilt and 15-15 Northwestern.

No one wants to see that. No one wants to see the first weekend be diminished because it gets buried beneath a two- or three-day Prelude Tournament.

Not a chance. What people want to see -- what they tune in to see -- is First Thursday and First Friday. They tune in to see Florida Atlantic reach the Final Four or Oakland and Yale take down Kentucky and Auburn. The latter actually happened last March, and, as always, it was the lifeblood of the Madness.

Now Sankey 'n' them want to muck it up with a bunch of teams that don't deserve to be there, just to add even more to their already immense piles of cash?

Uh ... no. No, no, no.