00:00You know, if you let people get a little bit of power, they will typically mess things up.
00:06And that's what's happening right now at the NCAA.
00:08Welcome back.
00:08Craig Carden, Joe Tyrone Johnson here as well.
00:11I'm not sure if it's a done, done deal, but it sounds like it's going to be done.
00:15We all agree that March Madness is still arguably the greatest sporting event that this country has to offer.
00:24All due respect to the Super Bowl.
00:26All due respect if you're a hockey guy in the Stanley Cup.
00:29Their playoffs have been awesome, right?
00:31Yeah.
00:32World Series, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:34But it seems like the NCAA tournament is perfect, right?
00:39Perfect.
00:40And because there's a chance to try to grab a couple extra dollars, it looks like they're going to expand
00:45again from 68 teams to 76 teams.
00:50And they're not just going to do it in the men's bracket because, God forbid, you do something for the
00:56men
00:57and you don't do it on the women's side.
01:00All hell breaks loose.
01:01They're now going to expand the women's bracket to 76 teams.
01:06I didn't even know there were 76 college women's basketball teams.
01:10And the men's bracket to 76 teams.
01:13Show of hands.
01:14How many people don't think that March Madness is perfect?
01:18How many people think we need to add another eight teams and another four playing games before the tournament starts
01:26on that amazing Thursday in March?
01:29Like, you have something that does not warrant tinkering with.
01:34You have, no credit to any of you, but you have the perfect sporting event.
01:43And all you're going to do by watering it down with more bad teams, less competitive teams, more blowouts, is
01:53to ruin something that we love.
01:56And yet, they cannot help themselves.
02:00More games, more teams, meaning more games, means more lucrative television contracts.
02:08This is not about competitive balance.
02:10This is not about we want to right previous wrongs where a bubble team didn't get in that deserved to
02:17get in.
02:18This is about money, and then it's about money, and then it's about money.
02:23Period.
02:24Stop.
02:25It's the whole thing, and what makes me mad is, it's kind of like now where we get the Tuesday,
02:30Wednesday, Thursday football in football.
02:33Nobody, no one asked for this.
02:35Not a single fan on earth said, hey, you know what would be great?
02:40If we take this perfect bracket we have going, because the bracket is perfect as well.
02:44It's all lined up.
02:45You got the 16 Cs and the four quadrants.
02:48We all love it.
02:48It's perfect.
02:49Right.
02:49Not a single human being requested this, and now here we go, and they'll try to say, they'll lie to
02:57us.
02:57If they just were honest and said, hey, with NIL, whatever the reason, we need more money, at least then
03:03it'd be honest.
03:03Well, let me tell you what it is.
03:04What it is.
03:05But they're going to say that it's, there's more conferences.
03:08They're going to say, we feel bad for Seton Hall last year.
03:10Like, Seton Hall deserved to be in the tournament.
03:13We feel bad for, you know, fill in the blank.
03:16It's stupid.
03:16It's dumb.
03:17We feel bad for all, but they won the NIT.
03:19They might have won a couple tournament games, right?
03:21That's what it's going to be.
03:22But they're already, what they've put out there isn't even that.
03:24They're saying that now, when 64 was thought of, there were X number of teams and X number of conferences,
03:30because you get the automatic bid.
03:32Well, now, with all these new conferences and with the sports expansion, there needs to be a place for the
03:38automatic bids,
03:39and those guys have to play somebody.
03:41That's what they're going to say.
03:43Now, if you want to blame anybody, you blame the success, if you want to, of all the streaming services.
03:49Because I guarantee you, the second announcement's going to be that those Monday, Tuesday playing games are going to be
03:57exclusive to Amazon.
04:00Netflix.
04:00Hulu, Netflix.
04:01Apple, all of them, yeah.
04:03Yeah, Peacock, whatever it might be.
04:04Yeah, all of them, yeah.
04:04And those companies, which are rolling in dough right now, want to get more into live sports, because let's be
04:10honest,
04:11live sports right now is the only thing that does well consistently on television.
04:18Yes, we all have our favorite shows, but none of them do as well as live sports does across the
04:25board, right?
04:26I don't care if it's NASCAR.
04:28I don't care if it's soccer.
04:29I don't care if it's girls playing basketball.
04:33Live sports does better than virtually everything else on television.
04:38Yeah.
04:39So it's an opportunity to put more live sports on television, to bring in more streaming dollars, and basically to
04:46water down something that does not need being watered down.
04:51No, you're absolutely right.
04:52I'm going to watch it.
04:53You're going to watch it.
04:54We're dumb sheep.
04:55We're sports fans, right?
04:57And it's going to be, well, now that there's 76 teams in, who's the 77th team?
05:03Like, there's no bubble anymore.
05:05Yeah.
05:05Now it's not like, hey, you know, winning 20 games in the Big East last year was not good enough
05:11to get Seton Hall into the tournament.
05:13Right.
05:13And we all agreed with that.
05:15Nobody had an issue with it.
05:16Now they get into the tournament, and they get waxed in the first round, and we're all saying to ourselves,
05:22well, that was a lot of fun.
05:23More blowouts is bad for March Madness.
05:27It's just bad.
05:29Less talent is bad for March Madness, and ultimately, you were going to lose what made March Madness great, and
05:38that was that the upsets in the first round, which now happen very rarely compared to the way they happened
05:45in the 80s and the 90s and early into the 2000s, if you go back and look, the last couple
05:50tournaments, the favorites win like 90% of the time now.
05:55Yeah, and now I guess in theory, depending on, they're not going to have one, two, three, and four seeds
06:00allegedly really playing in any of these games.
06:02You'll get some upsets in those games, but they'll be less significant.
06:07You'll get upsets on a Monday, but we really only care about the Thursday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday upsets.
06:13Correct.
06:13Those first real four days.
06:15By the way, most people, although it shows a decent audience compared to other things, when you look at the
06:20Monday, Tuesday games compared to the Thursday, Friday games.
06:24Not even close.
06:25Dude, it's night and day.
06:26And then the other thing to do, which I already hate, you know, the extra teams that are not worthy
06:32of being in the top 64, those teams should play the 416 seeds and the 415 seeds.
06:41Right.
06:41I don't know why they have them playing other seeds.
06:45Yeah, they'll have what they'll do.
06:46I don't get that at all.
06:47Yeah, they'll take two 10 seeds, have them play each other, so you made it, but you didn't, and then
06:52you become a 10 seed and have to do it again.
06:54Yeah.
06:55None of it makes sense, and I hate that it's all about money only because the fan's the one that
07:01suffers.
07:01A lot of people who don't make a lot of money take those two days off or they travel for
07:06those first two days.
07:06By the way, it's also Vasectomy Thursday for a lot of guys.
07:09You know about that.
07:09You talked about that.
07:10It's vacation days for a lot of guys.
07:12Right.
07:12And I'm going to be rude here for a second, and I don't mean to be.
07:16Let's be honest.
07:1876 women's teams?
07:20There's no doubt.
07:20What are we doing?
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