Syracuse Orange men’s basketball: how do we feel about NCAA Tournament expansion now?

Syracuse Orange men’s basketball fans have spent the last few weeks obsessing over the NET and looking for any bracket that had the Orange in contention.

In the near future, there will be a bit more room on the bubble as it’s expected that the NCAA Tournament will likely add another four to eight teams. This is a lot more realistic than talk of expanding up to 96 teams, and those extra bubble spots would have made Syracuse’s journey to the ACC Tournament a bit more interesting.

Purists don’t want to see the Tournament grow, but with the money involved in college athletics, it is inevitable. What will be interesting to watch is the actions of the SEC and Big Ten who are already pushing the College Football Playoff to guarantee more spots for their leagues.

The beauty of March Madness lies in the early round upsets. Casual fans want to see the big names in the Final Four, but that doesn’t mean expansion needs to cater to mediocre teams in the power leagues. I hope that this expansion provides us with even more excitement, and a revamped play-in round.

With expansion looming, the NCAA could raise the stakes of the play-in round by having the final four at-large bids all determined by play-in games. Major conference teams are going to benefit the most from the expanded slots, so take them and use their name recognition to draw more eyes to these games.

It’s not fair that 16 seeds are sent to Dayton (no offense to Dayton) and miss out on getting the full Tournament experience. It’s not fair to take bids from mid-major teams who deserve a shot, but taking the teams right on the edge of the bubble and letting them earn the right to advance works for me. These teams will have a short turnaround from Selection Sunday. The winners of play-in games will have to face a rested team in the next round. The odds won’t be in their favor, but we know that at some point one of them will make a deep Tournament run....and deep down in a place that other fanbases don’t want to admit, we know that at some point Syracuse is going to go from one of these expansion spots to the Sweet 16 and boy oh boy will we need to apologize for that one.