I am agreeing with the pundits who think that the era of the low major upset has come to an end. This is the second year in a row where every 1 through 4 seed won its first round game, and only two of the games were within 10 points. There is no way for these low-majors to compete with the majors for talent, or even hold onto the talent they get if they happen to get lucky on a few recruits. We are just wasting games in the first two days of the tournament with mismatches, and the casual fans are getting bored by it. The upsets were what made the tournament fun, and there may be 1 or 2 teams in the bottom 16 conferences that has even a theoretical chance of beating a college basketball team that has a $10M+ payroll. NIL and the Transfer Portal has made it really hard for these low-majors to win. They aren't winning in the regular season, and they aren't winning in the postseason.
The bottom 16 seeds this year were:
LIU, Siena, Prairie View A&M, Howard, UMBC, Lehigh, Furman, Queens, Idaho, Tennessee State, Wright State, Penn, North Dakota State, Kennesaw State, Cal Baptist, Troy
Who do you want to fight for in that group? Accounting for the current play in, that is 14 teams that are mostly guaranteed to lose their first round game in a blowout. Maybe one or two has a chance at an upset with the right matchup. Do we really need 14 games to find that 1 or 2 that may put up a fight?
My proposal: The bottom 16 conference winners should have play-in games to feed 8 teams into the 64 team field. These would be the 15 and 16 seeds in the 64 team bracket. These teams get seeded for play-in games after the low major conference tournaments, and play each other on the Saturday and Sunday before Selection Sunday and then seed the winners appropriately, most likely on the 15 and 16 lines. Only the strong survive, and maybe one of them gets lucky in the first round. Keep the money the same or even make it better for the low-majors in return for giving up the marginally better seeds. And these small schools get a showcase on those two days.
The next 6 conference champs (this year: Hawaii, Akron, Hofstra, Mcneese, Northern Iowa, High Point) would get slid down to the 13/14 line, although if one of them is better than the extra at-large, seed them appropriately. This would open 4 more slots for at-large. Assume Seton Hall, San Diego State, New Mexico, Indiana at the 13/12 lines, that have a better chance of beating a 4 or 5. I won't put up a stink if you want to keep play ins for at-large, but I am not sure what the point is. Just seed in the teams into the bracket, so SMU and NC State would just get seeded as 12's rather than playing on Tuesday and Wednesday. If you go much deeper with at-large teams, it gets really close to .500 teams getting in.
The result is a better tournament that recognizes the changes in the sport, creates more chances for upsets, expands the tournament, and actually creates more opportunities for mid-majors. This gives the A10, WCC, American and MWC a reasonable shot at getting a second or third team in the dance every year.
