How to make the NCAA Tournament better

The NCAA Men's Basketball tournament is the arguably the greatest sports spectacle the world has ever seen. Some purists would probably say the World Series has more prestige or the Super Bowl is the biggest event, but the NCAA definitely trumps those two in regards to sheer action. First, there's the wild conference tournaments over the two weeks before the tournament selection. Then comes the opening weekend (greatest day of the year for four days straight) and the Cinderella stories. Finally, after the March Madness subsides and a winner is declared, all basketball fans are left with a horrible case of depression. This results because the tournament is over. It's not so much because the season is over, it's because we have to "rely" on the NBA as the only basketball we get to see until the fall.

Let's get one thing straight, the tournament is fine the way it is. I don't recommend changing it at all. They already screwed over little schools with the "play in" game, basically having teams play for the right to lose in the first round to a 1 seed. This was implemented to get one more horrible major conference team into the tournament... like Seton Hall this year. For all the teams that don't make it, there's a tournament called the NIT, or National Invitation Tournament. Actually there's a preseason one too, but the postseason one goes on at the same time as the big tournament, just on tourney off days.

Are you going to say something relevant?

Yes. Lots of people are thrilled by the upsets that happen during the tournament, and maybe there's some sympathy for the higher ranked teams. I mean, George Mason is not one of the best 16 teams in the country, but their team is in the Sweet Sixteen. I'm not saying everything should go to plan, I'm saying there should be an outlet for these teams that are upset. Expand the NIT and send them there.

Here is the the NIT looks like now:

Pretty solid setup here. There are 10 seeds for each quarter of the bracket, with the top 2 per quarter getting first round byes. What I am about to suggest could never be pulled off. I wouldn't necessarily want it to, but it's an intriguing idea.

I've always wondered what it would be like for teams to be added to the NIT as they got eliminated from the NCAA tourney. The NIT would be like a giant losers bracket. The teams already in the NIT didn't do enough during the season or in the conference tournaments to qualify for the NCAA tournament. So as teams get knocked out, have them added through a complex series of byes and play-ins. To be honest, after the first round, no team should enter the tournament. Althought it would be intriguing to have the NCAA 1 seeds who missed the Final Four win the NIT, it isn't practical. Whoever gets knocked out the first round should enter the new NIT, resulting in a 72 team field. The original 40 NIT teams plus the 32 knocked out in the first round, not including the NCAA play-in game loser.

As I said, I've tried to draw this, but basically the NIT teams would play each other in the first round for the RIGHT to play one of the tourney dropouts. So there would be 20 first round games, with 20 winners. Then those 20 would play the worst 20 teams from the tournament (determined by seeding). After that, there would be the third round (a.k.a. the start of the real deal). The 20 remaining teams would be set up with the 12 best NCAA first round drop outs (determined by seeding again) to create a conventional 32 team tournament. It would be like the NCAA from the 2nd round on. The idea, although horribly inefficient, is totally feasable.

Here is what I came to:

Red and Green teams are the 40 original NIT teams. Blue teams are the lower 20 first round NCAA losers, with the Gray being the top 12 of the first round losers.