Jovenitti: Top 10 changes NCAA Tournament should consider

Right after Duke bored the nation last year by winning the NCAA Tournament (again), basketball… Right after Duke bored the nation last year by winning the NCAA Tournament (again), basketball fans immediately turned their attention to the latest Tournament expansion news. There were rumors that the NCAA would add another round and possibly invite as many as 128 teams to the Dance.

Luckily, the Tournament was only expanded from 65 to 68 teams, which will make for odd-looking brackets and more speculation over bubble teams. But why stop there?

This week, I bring you the top 10 changes the NCAA Tournament should make.

10. Big East Champion gets a bye. Let’s face it. The Big East is awesome. It’s almost as good in basketball as it is bad in football — almost. Sports writer Jason King recently wrote on Yahoo! Sports that the Big East might be too tough, which is why no Big East team has won the National Championship in the past six years, even though it was the best conference each of those years. The solution? The best team in the best conference should get a bye, which leads me to my next point.

9. Give the Big East its own regional. Last week, Pitt News columnist Greg Trietley outlined why all 16 Big East teams should make the Tournament. Give the Big East the entire East regional, and then let the other, lesser conferences play in the other three brackets. What’s that? How could the champion get a bye if all 16 teams make it? Uh, well …

8. Stop going to Dayton, Ohio. No offense to Dayton, but Dayton sucks. There is not much there, yet the NCAA Tournament holds its play-in game there every year. This year, the “city” gets to host the new First Four round, where the final four teams selected to the Tournament compete. Why relegate something new and exciting to the sixth-largest city in Ohio, home to an arena that fits only 13,000 fans? Play it somewhere fun, where fans will actually be excited to go.

7. Pick a random number between 64 and 74 every year. This year it’s 68. Next year, maybe it will be 70. The year after that, who knows, it could be 66. Imagine how many times you’ll hear the word “bubble” on ESPN.

6. Stop playing regional rounds at football stadiums. I get that the NCAA likes to play Final Four games at giant stadiums so it can increase its ridiculous profits even more by selling more tickets (but don’t let the players touch any of that money — gasp!). But playing Sweet 16 and Elite Eight rounds at places like the Louisiana Superdome is just a terrible idea. The stadium is usually less than half full, and the sight lines are terrible.

5. Keep ignoring the West Coast. West Coast fans and PAC-10 (or PAC-12 or whatever the heck it’s called now) fans like to claim that the NCAA and the media has an East Coast bias. Only four of this week’s Top 25 are Western schools. But the PAC-10 certainly isn’t doing anything to improve its status as the weakest conference. Of the eight regional rounds, only two are out West. I say keep it that way until the PAC-10 sends half of its conference to the Dance like the Big East, ACC and Big Ten do regularly.

4. The 16-seed gets a home game. How can you not feel bad for the lowly 16-seeds? Especially the little guys who have to face the overall No. 1 seed. I say pick a random 16-seed — preferably one that wins a play-in game — you know, as a reward for beating a crappy team — and give it a home game against the No. 1 seed. Maybe, just maybe, we’ll finally see a No. 1 seed fall in the first round. In all honesty, that’s probably the only way it’s going to happen. Until they do this though … Go 15-seeds, go!

3. Actually end it in March. The Tournament has many nicknames, but the best is by far “March Madness” — if not for the simple fact that I love alliteration. But the Tournament actually ends in April. That’s false advertisement, my friends. Why not start the college basketball season a week early and end March Madness in March?

2. Play at MSG more often. These last two are actually serious. The Tournament rarely visits Madison Square Garden in New York any more. I understand that the Big East holds it hostage for a week before the tournament with its own conference tournament, and then the National Invitation Tournament takes over a few weeks later — not to mention the fact that it has to find time to host NHL and NBA games. But it’s the Mecca of college basketball. The first and second rounds need to be held there soon. The Rangers and Knicks can take a nice, long road trip out West.

1. More student tickets. Most students get to go to regular-season home games of their team for free or ridiculously cheap — in Pitt’s case, $5. But when March rolls around, only about 50-100 tickets are allotted to students, not including seats for the Final Four since that’s at a giant stadium. What’s the result? A boring crowd filled with families and rich alumni. One of the best parts of college basketball is the intense atmosphere of games. But in the first four rounds of the sport’s biggest event, that aspect is absent. The simple solution is to give more tickets to students, since, you know, they are the ones paying tens of thousands of dollars to the schools in the first place.