10,000 team basketball tournament in the works according to Jim Boeheim

Nice suit.

That's of course Syracuse Head Basketball Coach Jim Boeheim. I heard an interview with Jim a day or two ago where once again he was discussing the number of teams in the NCAA tournament. For several years now Coach Boeheim has been saying that there should be more teams in the tournament.

Given that no team seeded lower than 8th has ever won the thing, that certainly seems to make sense. Clearly what one of the best sporting events going needs is the addition of a whole bunch of other teams that have absolutely no chance of winning the thing.

Most coaches are likely in favor of an expanded tournament. Why? Because nothing gets a coach fired faster than missing the tournament.

Of course, none of the coaches will come out and say that's why they want more teams in the tourney. And so when asked, you get spectacular coach-speak from guys like Boeheim.

I heard this garbage from Boeheim on the radio a couple days ago.

"See, yesterday (Monday), Connecticut was out of the tournament, and they still may be out, but they're a team that can win games in the tournament. That's why we need an expansion," Boeheim said.

He goes on to say that because of all the automatic qualifiers, we're not actually getting the best 65 teams in the country. He's referring of course to all the mid-major conferences that get one automatic bid to the Big Dance.

Approximately half of the bids are automatic. That means the selection committee is selecting the best 32 after the automatics. Some of those automatics ARE in fact teams that are amongst the best 32 in the country.

I know the math can be painful, but the point here is that as was previously stated, no team seeded lower than 8th has ever won it. That means if you're outside of the top 32 teams, you have almost NO CHANCE of winning the whole thing. So again, Boeheim is basically saying throw a whole bunch of teams into the thing just for the hell of it.

And as for the UCONN comments. Could they win a game or maybe even two in the NCAA tournament? Of course that is possible.

What about the fact that they have been HORRIBLE this season? They have a losing record in their conference. If you're going to let a team like UCONN into the tournament based on name alone it would seem, than why have a regular season at all?

As if the NCAA basketball regular season wasn't already meaningless enough. Now you want to make it even more meaningless by essentially letting any team with a pulse into the postseason?

Why don't we do away with regular season games altogether and just hold an open tournament. Any organization with a classroom and five tall guys can get in. We'll keep playing until someone is crowned king.

They do it in soccer. How hard can it be?