Sankey is the Borg...after destroying football, basketball could be his next target.
In a recent phone interview, Sankey acknowledged the tournament is one of the few things that bonds the disparate world of Division I together. "Nothing remains static," he told ESPN. "I think we have to think about the dynamics around Division I and the tournament."
He added that recent runs by UCLA from the First Four to the Final Four in 2021 and Syracuse's run to the round of 16 beginning with a play-in game in Dayton in 2018 show the caliber of power-conference teams on the fringe of the NCAA tournament.
"That just tells you that the bandwidth inside the top 50 is highly competitive," Sankey said. "We are giving away highly competitive opportunities for automatic qualifiers [from smaller leagues], and I think that pressure is going to rise as we have more competitive basketball leagues at the top end because of expansion."
This is the stuff that pisses me off beyond end.
When they first moved beyond 64 (when the 16 member WAC split into the WAC & Mountain West) the reasoning was that they couldn't take away any automatic bids from a lesser conference. Obviously the idea of taking away an at large, that almost assuredly would go to a member of a power conference was never a possibility.
The play-in games that they've refused to call play-in games deprive some schools of the actual experience, which is entirely bullspit. The champion of the Big Sky, the MEAC, etc should be part of the 64 team field that begins play on the Thursday after selections Sunday. That school did everything it was required to do (win it's confreence's autobid) while being afforded one opportunity. The last school from one of the power conferences to receive an at large bid had countless opportunities to earn its way into the field and failed nearly all of them. If one of those schools still needs the opportunity to be part of the NCAA tournament, they should be playing in Dayton against a school with a similar claim. Yes, they did a (surprinsingly) good thing when they went to four of these games by having the final at large teams participate in two of them but they really should have the final eight at large do this. They also should have only at large bids play these games once they expand.
I know an eleven seed from the SEC or B-12 will more likley make it through a few rounds than the one representative of any of the bottome five or six conferences. That isn't the point. Abelene Christian, Coppin St, Mercer, Valparaiso, Oral Roberts, Richmond, Hampton, Norfolk St, St Peters, Cleveland St, Middle Tennessee, Fairleigh Dickenson and UMBC are as much of the fabric of this tournament as shots by Laetner or Suggs.
