March Madness Play-in Games

When is the Madness really supposed to happen? Certainly not with these play-in games. Now that the "First Four" games are over, we can FINALLY get to the real tournament games. Trying to figure out where I stand with these games is not supposed to be a hard thing to determine. Play-in games are just not needed.


In this culture of everybody gets a chance at something, everybody gets a trophy mentality, the NCAA in their ultimate wisdom (sarcasm) decided to give teams that were on the bubble a final chance at getting into the main NCAA tournament. They should have never done this in the first place. We know that NCAA is about money and only money, so four extra games puts a little more money into the coffers of the execs for the NCAA.


The other part of this that I have asked myself since they implemented these play in games is that, do people really care about these games? I, for one, don't. I could name a bunch of other people that do not as well. In the end, we enjoy upsets, Cinderella, and the Final Four. However, what we really like, whether we admit or not, is seeing the "Big Boys" battle it out for the National Championship. If Davidson and VCU were playing for the title it may be the lowest rated game of all time. You could stick any non-major 5 conference team in there and people would not care.  If that sounds a bit elite than I am fine with it. People want to watch Kentucky, Arizona, Kansas, Duke, Michigan State, Wisconsin, and Gonzaga battle it out for college basketball supremacy. They don't want to see schools that they don't even know exist until the NCAA tournament comes around.


I say get rid of the play in games and just go with the original 64 teams and if these teams on the bubble want to complain about it, then so be it. They need to play better during the regular season and to leave no doubt to the selection committee to put them into the tournament. Make the "eye test" easy for the committee.


For now, we have play in games and they do not appear to be going away any time soon. Those of us who don't like them will just have to deal with it. March Madness is here, lets enjoy the ride!