Mikey D

We've all heard the rumor, and most people tend to be against it. "If it ain't broke, don't fix it", right? And to be honest, I've yet to hear much of a case for expansion- until now. From Tom Izzo.

Izzo is one of the first people that actually has come out and been for expansion with some pretty legitimate reasons for it, other than money. Here are Izzos three main reasons for expansion:

1. More quality teams around the country.
“I think there are better teams across the country. I think people have put more into basketball. I think there are a lot of good teams."..."But are there more better teams today than there were 15 years ago? To me, a lot more."

2. Coaching.
“Number two, I think people are judged, hired and fired accordingly, which I don’t think is fair. So, from a coaching perspective, I struggle with that. With football, there’s such a larger number, the percent that get a chance to play in a bowl game and usually that saves jobs, unfortunately."

3. Scheduling.
“Number three is my biggest one and that’s that I believe we would all schedule better if you didn’t have to get to this magical number, which now is getting up to 21 or 22 wins. That does not leave a lot for margin of error. When you add two more games like in our league, the Big Ten schedule, its tough enough. I like to play a lot of tough preseason games and sometimes it’s almost hurt us. I see some teams in our league, even this year, schedule a lot tougher and it might hurt them."

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Izzo also had these final thoughts as well:

“I do not know the TV reasons, financial reasons. I’ve not dealt with any of that to know whether that would be a positive or negative. I’m just strictly going on those three criteria.

I’m not sure it has to be 96 (teams). One time, I heard 68 or 69 too and I don’t think it should be that. I think it should be a significant amount higher, but 96 might be too many. Finding the right number in there I don’t have the answer for."

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What do you think? I am still in the camp that is against expansion, but the quality of basketball has definitely risen in the past decade or so. Look how far some of the smaller conferences have come in recent year, like the MVC and MWC. The teams from these conferences are no longer getting one bid (the automatic), they are receiving multiple at-large bids- which means more teams from the major conferences are being left out.

On the other hand, by not expanding the quality of basketball is at its highest its ever been. With so many good teams across the nation, only the cream of the crop make it. This makes for good basketball from the beginning till the end. And ultimately, isn't that what we really want?

Not to mention the prestige that comes along with making the NCAA tournament. Izzo's streak of consecutive tourny appearances will be cheapened because of the amount of teams that would end up making the tournament. I mean, how many times do we moan and groan when one of those sub-.500 teams makes the tournament that doesn't belong? I think I would be ten times more pissed to have to see multiple teams like UConn and Minnesota make the tournament; teams that can barely get over the .500 mark.

I respect Izzo's opinions, but I don't want to see the tournament expanded- for now at least.

~Mikey D