LITTLE ROCK — When the story broke a few days ago that the NCAA was considering expanding its tournament field, there was joy from some and angst among others.
Purists seem to think 65 is the perfect number of teams, which, keep in mind, is slightly more than 20 percent of all the Division I college basketball teams.
People with vision see the expansion to 128 as a winwin-win situation.
The idea is that 128 NCAA Tournament teams would give a lot of coaches more job security since it seems more get fired for not making the tournament than for not graduating players.
Second, the current idea would be the 64 winners would advance into what wenow know as March Madness and the 64 losers would go into the NIT.
Lastly, and certainly not least, that would mean almost 40 percent of the D-I schools playing basketball would continue into postseason play.
Why is that important? For the sake of fairness.
There are approximately 120 colleges that play D-I football, and 68 of those are in bowl games.
Starting today - which some say is the real start of bowl season because the SEC finally plays its first bowl game - and ending next Saturday, there will be 21 bowl games played.
By the time the Arkansas Razorbacks finish with East Carolina and Michigan State plays Texas Tech on Jan. 2, there will still be four more bowl games: One each on Jan. 4, 5, 6 and 7, when Texas and Alabama meet in the BCS Championship Game.
In the next seven days, nine SEC schools will play in a bowl, and that doesn’t include Alabama making the SEC the Strongest Endorsed Conference in America.
Counting the Sugar and BCS Championship games, the SEC will be involvedin more than $50 million in payouts, which go into the SEC’s bank account. After expenses and extra percentages for BCS bowl teams, the SEC will divvy up the money this spring.
Yet, the money is not the only thing that is important. There is also exposure.
Kentucky faces Clemson tonight in the only bowl game of the day, and it is on ESPN.
Monday, Georgia takes on Texas A&M at 4 p.m. on ESPN2, the only bowl game of the day.
Tennessee faces Virginia Tech at 6:30 p.m. Thursday on ESPN, the final bowl game on a day when the first game starts at 11 a.m.
On Friday, New Year’s Day, which used to be considered the optimum day for bowling,Auburn plays Northwestern at 10 a.m. on ESPN. At noon, LSU will kick off against Penn State on ABC, and the day’s grand finale will be Florida vs. Cincinnati on Fox.
On Saturday, Jan. 2, South Carolina plays Connecticut (how does a school like UConn become a power in men’s and women’s basketball plus football?) at 1 p.m. on ESPN, which is the same time the Cotton Bowl kicks off on Fox with Ole Miss taking on Houston Nutt’s alma mater, Oklahoma State.
At 4:30 p.m., the only televised game for almost four hours will be East Carolina-Arkansas on ESPN.
That’s a ton of exposure for the SEC, and five days before the nation turns it attention to Alabama and Texas.
It may not be possible for all 34 bowls to survive these tough economic times, so what might be good for the long-term future would be for Jerry Jones to consider adding a second bowl with a tie-in to the SEC, which needs another bowl for its Western Division.
And, last but not least, if the quiet planning by some central Arkansas folks steps up, a Rice Bowl in War Memorial Stadium could get accredited.
A bowl game in central Arkansas has no downside.
When you consider how much the bowls mean to college football, then doubling the NCAA Tournament basketball field to 128 and adding money and exposure for the schools seems like a natural.
Sports, Pages 25 on 12/27/2009