Jay Bilas Rips NCAA Tournament Expansion Idea
While the NCAA Tournament is one of the best competition formats in college athletics, the allure of March Madness doesn’t stop experts from trying to add more teams to the tournament field.
One expert against the idea of expanding is ESPN’s Jay Bilas, who crushed the NCAA over the idea of expanding the NCAA Tournament field.
Bilas shot down the idea on ESPN’s College GameDay broadcast, saying, “Never underestimate the NCAA’s capacity to do something stupid. And if they did this, it would be profoundly stupid.”
While the topic of expanding the NCAA Tournament seems to pop up each offseason, experts like Bilas have been vocally opposed to the possibility.
“When anyone says more teams need access to the tournament — every team has the same access to the tournament now,” Bilas said. “All you have to do is win your conference’s automatic bid, which is against your peers with a group of teams that you have chosen to be among, and every team is in the tournament already. All you have to do is win your conference tournament. You’re already in the tournament.”
Bilas finished his thoughts by comparing the tournament bracket to toilet paper, saying, “What are we gonna do now? We’re going to 96, and we’re going to print the bracket out first on legal paper, then on a roll of toilet paper, and just roll it out. It doesn’t make any sense.”
The 2024 NCAA Tournament tips off on Tuesday, March 19th, with Selection Sunday going live on Sunday, March 17th.
