A 128-team Tourney? Great!

Calling my trophy room a room is an insult to rooms all over the world.

It’s unfortunate… Calling my trophy room a room is an insult to rooms all over the world.

It’s unfortunate but true. The room in question is nothing more than a tiny, plastic bin filled with roughly seven baseball trophies.

Out of those seven, my various little league teams finished in first place exactly zero times.

What does this have to do with anything, besides the pathetic-ness of my little league teams, in which I certainly played a helping hand?

Well, back in the glory days of most people’s athletic careers, a trophy was given to everyone.

Thanks for showing up. Really, we don’t care that in your first at-bat you stood on home plate, or that after you were hit by a pitch you ran to third base. You don’t believe us? Here’s a tiny, gold-colored guy holding a bat! Just don’t drop it, cause it will break, even if you drop it in the mud or sand or anything, really.

And if Bobby Knight and Virginia Tech coach Seth Greenberg have their way, many more student-athletes might be getting some sort of trophies in the future.

During ESPN’s Selection Sunday coverage, Knight, who has been nothing short of brilliant as an ESPN analyst, suggested expanding the NCAA Tournament to 128 teams. Greenberg agreed.

Knight thought the expansion from 65 teams to 128 would help to weed out the pretenders earlier in the Tournament.

When the ESPN crew interviewed Greenberg, he, too, thought an expansion to 128 teams seemed like a good idea. He compared it to the large number of bowl games in college football, and said that playing in the NCAA Tournament can be one of the best experiences a college basketball player can have. Therefore, as many students as possible should have the opportunity to compete.

This seems like a nice spot to mention that Virginia Tech missed out on the Tournament this season. Maybe Greenberg has felt this way for years, but waited until one of his teams narrowly missed a bid so he could be interviewed on national TV and start the revolution.

One might think that 65 teams is a lot of teams, but really, it’s only kind of a lot of teams. There are 341 schools in Division I NCAA men’s basketball. That’s a lot, not 65.

So would doubling the amount of teams in the Tournament give the fans more upsets, and another round of exciting basketball? Or would all the higher seeds continue to dominate the new opening round, and it would become the Papajohns.com Bowl of basketball? Tough to say.

If there’s one positive about doubling the number of teams to 128, it is hearing Jim Boeheim’s post-Selection Sunday rant about how Syracuse’s RPI of 119 should have been more than enough to get the Orange in the Tournament.

But Knight and Greenberg bring up an interesting point in that we don’t often hear people suggest changes to the NCAA Tournament, which is widely viewed as one of the better sporting events in professional or collegiate athletics.

But now that the idea is out there, in what ways could the Tournament improve?

I think Greenberg was on the right path with wanting to allow more students to experience playing in the Tournament. So how about a rule that states every player has to play at least eight minutes a game?

Sounds good to me. I also think that every player on the court should have to touch the ball before a shot goes up.

Also in the name of making things fair, a 16 seed has never beaten a top seed, so that needs to change.

All 16 seeds should be able to play seven men at once. If that doesn’t shake up the brackets a little bit, then we bump it up to eight.

This next one isn’t solely Tournament-related, but everyone seemed to love how the NBA raised its age limit to 19, preventing players going straight from high school to the pros.

This in turn has made the NCAA more competitive by forcing players who might’ve entered the draft to go to school, albeit for only a year in some cases.

Well, why not raise the age limit again? How does 28 sound? The NCAA could then give players 10 years of eligibility in college. Imagine the great basketball in the Tournament then.

Yeah, the NBA might suffer a bit, but wouldn’t it be great to see student-athletes become graduate student-athletes, or go to law or medical school while still playing?

And, of course, it’s time to center the NCAA logo. Come on now, it’s really bothersome. Just put the four letters in the center of the blue circle already. Please.

With these additions the Tournament improves from one of the greatest American sporting events of the year to a worldwide holiday.

And I don’t want the Tournament renamed after me, even though I know it’s tempting. Really, I don’t need to do interviews about how I saved the NCAA Tournament and receive all types of recognition.

A trophy, on the other hand, would be quite nice.