okay, first of all, let me be clear that i am not necesarily saying that I actually favor the 96team dance.

But, as kind of a DEvil's advocate, let me throw this out there....

my favorite days of the tourney are the first thrusday and friday. im sure that some folks will say that is not thier favorite part... but i surely dont think im totally alone on that issue.

with the new setup, two things happen.
first, and most importantly, round1 will now be on the weekend. (by the way, im gonna call the new first round, "round zero", and i will not count teams as being in the big dance until they win that first game, i know NCAA will never go along with that, but thats what I am doing in my own little mind)
now i know alot of folks skip work, i know i have taken a halfday on occasion, but sometimes you cant. i think it will be really cool to have those games on the weekend.

second, the new round1 (the round played on the first weekend) will unquestionably be even better than the old round one because the teams playing the 1 and 2 seeds will usually not be the autoqualifiers who went 14-17 against the weakest schedule in the country but won the CrapDog Athletic Association Conference Tourney... granted, they will still be 60ish rpi teams who are either secondteir midmajors or .500 teams in the big conferences, but those guys may be able to pull off the upset once in every 10 or 12 tries, whereas the old 16 has never ever beaten a 1.

and then the next week just sets up to be a hoops-fest, with a buttload of games 6 days in a row.

as for round zero, yeah, i know it may border on unwatchable at times, but i think there could be some interesting matchups, too. i'll watch it.

as for the NIT, i know folks are saying it will be scrapped... i think they should take the round1 losers. but maybe that wouldnt work for some reason. and, i guessi prolly still wouldnt watch it unless it was my team. anyways, jsut a thought.

Nit taking the 16 losers of round 1 would be pretty cool, they could even throw an extra 16 teams in there if they needed 32 total teams but I think that is an excellent idea. Don't make the 64 teams round then you can play in the losers bracket.

Heck why not invite every loser from the NCAA to come over and play like a double elimination tourney. Lose your game in the NCAA and play the winner of the last set of games in the NIT.

I actually like the first Thursday and Friday best myself. What I wish they would do is play the "round zero" games earlier in the week, but I doubt that will happen.

I think the matchups will still be exciting. A lot of the Conference Tournament Finals feature exciting matchups. The new R0 games will feature matchups at least that good and often even better.

As for the NIT, I'm not sure what will happen. I thought the NCAA was contractually bound to the NIT through 2015 at least, so it may not be easy to get rid of it.

By the way it might sound like it but that was not sarcastic I actually would be intrigued as you end up with a not so deflating march if your team, like Wisconsin, looses out early.

I was kinda thing that, too schroe... Not sure exactly. How to wqork it, but some type of consolation bracket could be cool as long as the playuers and coaches buy in.

Bytheway, I think there will be 32 losers in roundzero

But 6 days in a row of the bigdance duribg that second week is gonna make it hard for any consey tourney to compete. Why watch the losers on espn2 when the real thing is on cbs? I guess they can still. Have mondays

Quote: Originally posted by oldave on 4/04/2010I was kinda thing that, too schroe... Not sure exactly. How to wqork it, but some type of consolation bracket could be cool as long as the playuers and coaches buy in.
Bytheway, I think there will be 32 losers in roundzero

But 6 days in a row of the bigdance duribg that second week is gonna make it hard for any consey tourney to compete. Why watch the losers on espn2 when the real thing is on cbs? I guess they can still. Have mondays

The real thing might be on ESPN and ESPN2 next year. Even though the tourney is wildly popular, CBS is still hemorrhaging money with the deal they signed. The whole expansion is so there will be more games and more revenue to attract a new TV deal similar to the one they have now.