Wednesday, ACC coaches proposed the dumbest idea of the week, suggesting that we should do a 2021 March Madness tournament that features every single Division One basketball team.

Today the NCAA said no:

“At this time we are not working on any contingency plan that involves expanding the tournament field.”

Nor should the field be expanded ever again. It should not have been expanded to 68 teams. It should have remained at 64 teams. Anything beyond that is just watering down the product and letting in programs that really don’t deserve to be there anyway. It should be a challenge to qualify for the tournament, because then it actually means something.

Plus, in a COVID world, shouldn’t we be shrinking field instead of expanding it? It should be like George Costanza in the pool.

Here’s my proposal, from Wednesday’s story:

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. 

Thank you to the NCAA for squashing this crazy idea.