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This is something of an ongoing rant of mine.  I didn't put it in the BB thread because it is a related but somewhat separate topic about the NCAA Tournament itself.  

My long-running complaint is that CBB as it is currently construed is extremely unfair to major conference teams.  According to the NCAA's NET metric the best 68 CBB teams are in just 13 leagues:

• 12 are in the B1G
• 9 are in the Big East
• 9 are in the SEC
• 7 are in the ACC
• 7 are in the P12
• 6 are in the Big 12
• 5 are in the A10
• 5 are in the AAC
• 3 are in the WCC
• 2 are in the MWC
• 1 is in the SoCon
• 1 is in the MVC
• 1 is in the ASUN

The other 19 leagues have a grand combined total of zero tournament-quality teams.  Their best teams are ranked in the 70's (Ivy, MAC, Southland, Am East).  Most of these other conferences (14 of 19) do not even have a team in the top-100, five do not have a team in the top-136 (double the tournament size) and two (SWAC, MEAC) do not have a team in the top-200.  

This is grossly unfair to a major conference team such as Minnesota and Purdue.  According to the NCAA's NET rankings the Gophers are the 44th best team in the nation.  There are 68 slots in the tournament so they should easily be in but alas, they are two games under .500 so they likely need to go on a ridiculously improbable run of beating Northwestern (#159), Iowa (#34), Illinois (#39) either Wisconsin (#24), Michigan (#25), or Rutgers (#31), then either Michigan State (#7), Ohio State (#16), Maryland (#18), Purdue (#33), Penn State (#35), Indiana (#59), or Nebraska (#196) to make it in.  Worse, they have to accomplish this in five games in five days.  

This is grossly unfair to teams like Minnesota and Purdue as well as similarly situated teams in other strong leagues.  

It also makes the tournament LESS entertaining.  I know a lot of people will disagree at least at first, but hear me out:
The bottom four or so seeds (#13-#16) are generally the league tournament champions of the 19 leagues referred to above which do not have a single team that is actually tournament-worthy.  Thus, instead of getting tournament-worthy teams from those leagues, we simply get the "tallest midget" out of the MEAC, SWAC, etc.  

Most people love the upsets but how many upsets are there, really?  

• 1-139:  #16 seeds have one win ever in 140 tries.  
• 8-132:  #15 seeds have 8 wins in 140 tries (roughly one every 4-5 years) against the #2 seeds.  
• 21-119:  #14 seeds have 21 wins in 140 tires (roughly three every five years) against the #3 seeds.  
• 29-111:  #13 seeds have 29 wins in 140 tries (roughly four every five years) against the #4 seeds.  

It gets worse in the second round:

• 0-1:  The one #16 seed that made it to the second round lost.  
• 1-7:  Only one #15 seed has ever made the S16.  
• 2-19:  Only two #14 seeds have ever made the S16.  
• 6-23:  Only six #13 seeds have ever made the S16.  

It ends the second weekend:

• 0-9:  The nine 13-15 seeds that made the S16 ALL lost their S16 game.  

These crappy teams are simply irrelevant to the National Championship.  No team seeded #13 or worse has EVER made it to even the E8.  

My view is that we should do one of two things, either:

• Cut the tournament down to just 32 teams (because no #9-16 seed has EVER won a F4 game), or
• Expand the tournament to 80 teams.  

The purpose of expanding the Tournament to 80 teams would be threefold:

• To reduce the disparity between the best teams left out and the worst teams included, and
• To improve the quality of opponents for the top seeds in the early rounds, and
• To make the tournament schedule better for fans.  

Point 1:
Using this year as an example, there will be multiple teams like Purdue and Minnesota from good leagues with ~.500 records ranked in the 30's-40's left out.  There will also be multiple leagues that produce champions who couldn't realistically compete with Purdue's or Minnesota's second stringers.  Adding 12 more at-large teams would alleviate that at least somewhat.  

Point 2:
As pointed out above, those "tallest midget" league champions have a dismal record in the tournament.  The bottom four seeds are a combined 59-501 (.011) in the first round, 9-50 (.015) in the second round and none have EVER won a S16 game.  As you will see below, making them face a better team first would improve the quality of opponents for the top teams leading to more upsets and a more exciting tournament.  

Point 3:  
I've always thought it was silly that the busiest two days of the tournament are the first two, a Thursday and a Friday.  Most of the fans are at work trying to sneak peeks at our phones to check scores.  My plan fixes that.  

My proposal would be to expand the tournament to 80 teams by effectively making the #13-#16 seeds ALL face a "play-in".  My schedule would be as follows:
First weekend:
Thursday/Friday:

• Each of the eight sites would host two games, eight games per day, 16 games total to get down to 64 teams.  Since there would only be eight games per day they could start later in the day and all or at least most of them could be played when fans could actually watch.  

Saturday/Sunday:

• Each of the eight sites would host four games, 16 games per day, 32 games total to get down to 32 teams.  Thus, the busiest two days of the tournament would be a Saturday and a Sunday so people would be off work and could watch.  

Monday/Tuesday:

• Each of the eight sites would host two games, eight games per day, 16 games total to get down to 16 teams.  

Second Weekend:
Saturday/Sunday:

• Each of the four sites would host two games, four games per day, eight games total to get down to eight teams.  

Monday/Tuesday:

• Each of the four sites would host one game, two games per day, four games total to get down to four teams.  

Third weekend:

Saturday:

• The Final Four site would host two games to get down to two teams.  

Monday:

• The National Championship game.  

I know some people will say that those crappy league champions won their league championship.  To that I would say: 
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RlBr2fyqn9g

Then they might say that Purdue or Minnesota has the opportunity to win their league Championship.  Well, they do, but it is several orders of magnitude more difficult than winning any of the worst dozen or so leagues.  Minnesota's path:

• #159 Northwestern on Wednesday
• #34 Iowa on Thursday
• #39 Illinois on Friday
• #24/25/31 Wisconsin/Michigan/Rutgers on Saturday
• #7/16/18/33/35/59/196 MSU/tOSU/UMD/PU/PSU/IU/UNL on Sunday

That requires AT LEAST three wins over teams ranked in the top-40 and four unless either IU or UNL also makes it all the way to the CG.  

Our worst team, Nebraska, would be the best in the MEAC and SWAC.  Our second worst, Northwestern, would be the best in those as well as the NEC.  Our third worst team (#59 IU) would be the best team in 19 of the 32 leagues and the Hoosiers would be the top-4 in two more.  

The NCAA tournament is a spectacle, nothing more. It is a ridiculous way to crown a champion, but it is exciting and creates great ratings. The thing is that's the point of sport: entertainment. It does that: it entertains. If crowning the most appropriate champion were actually the goal, it would look completely different.

Specifically to your point: Minnesota and Purdue have no business being anywhere near a basketball championship for 2020. That a bunch of the other teams who will be in the tournament don't either doesn't mean Minnesota and Purdue are getting the short end of things.

I don't know how you'd do it, but there probably needs to be a 1A and 1AA in hoops.

Thought this was about the Corona Virus - I'll show myself out

I have no interest in making the regular season even worse.

If you want to get rid of auto-bids, and cut the tournament size in half, ok.  But none of those teams have any justifiable claim to be national champ, so I'd rather watch a team win it's way in, than watch a .500ish team from a major conference.

Personally, I disagree with this simply because the .500ish team from a major conference (ie PU and MN) is vastly better than the "tallest midget" from the MEAC.  I'd rather see better teams.  

The NCAA tournament is a spectacle, nothing more. It is a ridiculous way to crown a champion, but it is exciting and creates great ratings. The thing is that's the point of sport: entertainment. It does that: it entertains. If crowning the most appropriate champion were actually the goal, it would look completely different.

I agree with entirely.  

Specifically to your point: Minnesota and Purdue have no business being anywhere near a basketball championship for 2020. That a bunch of the other teams who will be in the tournament don't either doesn't mean Minnesota and Purdue are getting the short end of things.

I strongly disagree.  Just because PU and MN aren't NC caliber doesn't mean that they aren't getting the short end of things.  Assuming they miss the tournament, they are going to be deprived of that spot to make room for a bunch of teams that they are VASTLY better than.  That is getting the short end of things.  

But if we don't make it, I won't mind. To be honest, we don't have a legitimate shot at the NC either. I do think this team, when it plays to their potential, can compete with anyone in the country. But we haven't shown the ability to string together more than ~2 of those performances in a row, especially on the road or neutral sites, and so I don't think for a second that we can do so 6 times against the best teams in the country (and we'd be seeded such that we'd face top-8 seeds in every round unless there's a broken bracket).

I get that.  I feel about the same with Ohio State.  Like Purdue, the Buckeyes have some great wins (over #8 Kentucky in Vegas, over #11 Nova by 25 points, over #12 Maryland).  Those give me hope in any game against any opponent, Kansas included.  On the other hand, this team has not given me any reason to believe that they can string together six straight performances at that level.  

We all know the 13-16 seeds aren't going anywhere. But neither are the 9-12 seeds even though occasionally they get hot and make the FF. They get there and face a legitimately great team and get beat.

You are exactly right.  I noted above that no #13 or worse has ever won a second weekend game and no #9 or worse has ever won a third weekend game.  It might happen someday but if it does it will almost certainly be because two of them got there and one of them had to win.  

I like the current format. I'd drop it to 64 

My big objection to that would be that it would deprive two pretty good major conference teams of a spot because they compromised and made it the last four at-large and the last four auto-bids.  It should have been the last four auto-bids.  The last four auto-bids are horrible, the last for at-large are mediocre.  

These points seem to contradict each other, why add more teams if they aren't good enough to win anyway?

I don't think they contradict but I can see why you read it that way.  What I was trying to say was that if you are going to include a bunch of teams that don't have a legitimate chance then you should at least include the BEST teams that don't have a legitimate chance rather than a bunch of crappy "tallest midgets".  

If you want to eliminate the crappy teams then switch to 16 or 32 and host best of three series, this is far more likely to advance the best team each round.

I would love that, but as a practical matter it would never happen.  What makes the tournament so exciting is the one-and-done nature of it.  Kansas appears to be the best team in the country this year but if they have an off night next weekend they'll miss the S16.  That is exciting.  

Adding more teams dilutes the product as now the crappy teams are playing other crappy teams (compared to those making the tournament) and the idea of a cinderalla or upset is what's exciting, this decreases the likelihood of that happening.

I disagree for two reasons:

• The twelve teams this would add wouldn't be crappy teams, they'd be mediocre teams like Minnesota and Purdue.  
• Forcing the truly crappy teams (roughly the bottom 16 or so auto-bids) to play mediocre teams before they got to play legitimate teams (the top-4 seeds that they play in what is now the first round) would result in substantially better 13-16 seeds (or their 17-20 seed replacements) and give the top-4 seeds much stiffer competition.  

As I noted in my original post, the #13-16 seeds are terrible.  They are just 59-501 (.011) in the first round.  The crux of my proposal is to weed them out before the legitimate teams start playing.  Teams like PU and MN have a MUCH better chance of taking down a top-4 seed than the MEAC Champion.  This would absolutely NOT decrease the likelihood of upsets happening.  

If I were going to do anything to the tournament, I'd eliminate the 1st four. I watch every random conference tournament and virtually every tournament game, I've never watched one of the first 4 games.

Bwar mentioned that also, I'm going to get back to it.  

I don't want more early round upsets, if it's Purdue or Washington or whatever.  Those happen.  None of those lower seeded teams deserve to win a title.  Arguing that the bad Power conference teams are better, isn't the point.  That's a straw man argument, nobody is arguing they are.  It's simply that any team to come from that spot isn't deserving of a title, so it's a better entertainment product (and again that's all this is) to let teams win their way in, rather than allow better, but .500 Power Five teams.

Sure, there would probably be an uptick in upsets, but it's not just upsets that make the tourney, it's that the upsets come from Middle Tennessee, Hampton, UMBC, and the like.  If a Minnesota pulls a 15 over 2 upset, who cares?  And Minnesota is just as undeserving of a national championship as UMBC.