I missed this last week.
ACC men’s basketball coaches are proposing an expanded 2021 NCAA tournament that would include every Division I team.
Several ACC coaches would prefer to avoid nonconference games in the 2020-21 season due to complications from the coronavirus pandemic, with sources telling ESPN that Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is spearheading the push for an all-inclusive NCAA tournament.
ACC coaches voted Wednesday to propose the expanded 2021 NCAA tournament, sources confirmed to ESPN. The vote was first reported by Stadium.
Krzyzewski released a statement later Wednesday that said, in part, there “is no better way” to celebrate the game “than involving every team in the most prestigious basketball tournament on the planet.”
He said the primary factors the coaches considered were the health and safety of players, the incentive that there will be games leading to the tournament, and that they need to be unified as a sport, with all 357 Division I teams.
“This is not a regular season,” Krzyzewski said. “It is clearly an irregular season that will require something different. Our sport needs to be agile and creative.”
Oh, my God, this would have been awesome. I mean, dumb and unworkable from a pandemic perspective, but come on, let us dream for a minute. We all love the scrappy underdogs taking out established blue bloods in the first round, and a first round that included 256 teams would have had all kinds of possibilities for that happening. Just getting to see a slew of new mascots and goofy uniform color schemes and 15-second promos for each school we’d never heard of would have made the whole thing worthwhile. So of course the cooler heads at the NCAA killed the idea without even giving it a chance to breathe.
The ACC’s proposal for an all-inclusive NCAA men’s basketball tournament that would feature every Division I team does not currently have the backing of the event’s leadership.
On Thursday, NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt said the organization is not considering a “contingency plan” to expand the tournament, a day after ACC men’s basketball coaches, in a movement led by Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, proposed a field that would include every Division I team in the 2021 NCAA tournament after a Wednesday vote.
“Every college basketball team’s goal is to play in the NCAA tournament because everyone loves March Madness,” Gavitt said in a statement. “Certainly we missed it this year and can’t wait for 2021. While all who care about the game are entitled to their opinion, and we’ll always listen respectfully, at this time we are not working on any contingency plan that involves expanding the tournament field.”
Spoilsports. OK, OK, I admit, there were logistical issues, but surely they could have been overcome.
Consider:
- There are 346 Division I schools eligible for NCAA tourney play this coming season. That is 324 more teams than the NBA sent to its Orlando bubble. Conservatively estimating each school’s travel party at 25, we’re going to repeatedly test and quarantine more than 8,000 people? Just so half of them can lose and go home after 40 minutes of basketball? I don’t think so.
- The bracket itself, while amusing, would tax even the best of us. The basic math dictates that 166 teams receive opening round byes. The remaining 180 would play 90 additional games to create a symmetrical field of 256 teams, followed by a tidy eight-round gauntlet through the Final Four.
- All told, we’re increasing the number of games — with commensurate travel and risk — from 67 to 345. That’s a fivefold increase and, while epidemiology is not my “ology,” I do know that infectious disease transmission is not arithmetic. We would be looking at way, way, WAY more than five times the amount of exposure.
Yes, yes, I know, the damned pandemic. I know in my heart of hearts that this would never have been possible. But damn, it would have been fun.