Behold, the dumbest idea of the week.

During these uncertain times, the ACC basketball coaches got together and tried to come up with a solution to March Madness, since everything has been turned upside down due to COVID-19. Their suggestion, instead of limiting teams getting into the big dance, was to instead have every single division one team qualify.

Just for context here, there are 346 division one basketball teams, so we’re talking about a tournament in which Villanova (a Philly school) could play against the Stetson University Hatters from the powerhouse Atlantic Sun conference. Who wouldn’t want that? After all, an 86 seed has never beaten a #1 seed!

From ESPN:

“Several ACC coaches would prefer to avoid nonconference games in the 2020-21 season due to complications from the coronavirus pandemic, with sources telling ESPN that Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski is spearheading the push for an all-inclusive NCAA tournament.

ACC coaches voted Wednesday to propose the expanded 2021 NCAA tournament, sources confirmed to ESPN. The vote was first reported by Stadium.

Krzyzewski released a statement later Wednesday that said, in part, there “is no better way” to celebrate the game “than involving every team in the most prestigious basketball tournament on the planet.”

…

“This is not a regular season,” Krzyzewski said. “It is clearly an irregular season that will require something different. Our sport needs to be agile and creative.”‘

Seriously? That is the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard. You know why William and Mary doesn’t get a spot in “the most prestigious basketball tournament on the planet?” Because they stink! And if safety is an issue, we should doing the exact opposite of this idea, and limiting team participation, not expanding it.

Thankfully Joe Lunardi squashed this nonsense immediately when he wrote this:

There are 346 Division I schools eligible for NCAA tourney play this coming season. That is 324 more teams than the NBA sent to its Orlando bubble. Conservatively estimating each school’s travel party at 25, we’re going to repeatedly test and quarantine more than 8,000 people? Just so half of them can lose and go home after 40 minutes of basketball? I don’t think so.

…

The NCAA tournament isn’t an exhibition. It isn’t charity. It is an earned opportunity to compete for a national championship.

THANK YOU Joe Lunardi. We’re not handing out participation trophies here. If the Quinnipiac Bobcats want to earn their first March Madness bid, they can do it the old-fashioned way, and actually win the MAAC for once.

And knowing the ACC, they’d put the bubble(s) in North Carolina, just to be sure that Duke gets their home games. It’s a tradition unlike any other, letting the Blue Devils open in Winston-Salem or Charlotte or somewhere else nearby. Everybody else gets to go pound sand, because they’re not the almighty Duke.

The real solution here is to just do what the football conferences are doing. No non-conference games, just in-conference. Play everybody else in the ACC home and away, then crown your champion. Then, because there are 32 division one basketball conferences, each sends their champ to a bubble and we do a 32-team March Madness. It’s a good, round number, and it’s safe and logistically doable. You’d be testing 800 people instead of 8,000. That’s much better than 346 teams, or 68 teams with stupid play-in games that nobody really truly cares about.

This is madness. Don’t let the ACC coaches get away with this.