NCAA should change "First Four" to last 8 bubble teams

I agree, I was thinking the same thing as well. It will boost ratings for these early games, seems like a win win

Definitely an improvement on what we have now

If you really want to "punish" bubble teams, make all the play in games as 16 seeds, and play the 1 seeds. Imagine seeing Ole Miss against Wisconsin in the first round. Would make a much more exciting first round.

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The field is 68 teams now, got to get over that.

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I know. I just think it's dumb.

So you'd be putting all four of those teams in as the 16's and moving all the seedings for current 16-12's up 2 spots.

Then you'd have to take out the last 2 11 seeds and even two of the 10 seeds.

That would make in this tournament hypothetically

Ole Miss V
BYU

Dayton V
Boise St

Texas V
UCLA

Georgia V
Indiana

Half of the winners become 11 seeds the other half 10 seeds.

Not a bad idea.

The reason it got to 65, a conference was added and they didn't want to take away the at large spot. And then once you had 1 play in game might as well have 4. I do agree however that all 4 games should be for the 11th seed in each bracket. To make a smaller school fly to Dayton play and then go where ever to play one of the Top 4 teams in the country seems a little daunting task

A little history...

The game was conceived after the Mountain West Conference, which had been formed in 1999 following the split of the Western Athletic Conference, was given an automatic bid for its conference champion, which made it the 31st conference to receive an automatic berth into the men's tournament. Unlike the women's tournament, which accommodated this change by eliminating an at-large bid to keep their field at 64 teams, the organizers of the men's tournament elected to keep their at-large entries at 34. In order to eliminate one of the teams to have a 64-team bracket, it became necessary for another game to be played between the two lowest-ranked teams among the automatic bid leagues.

Go to a 64 team at-large tournament with no automatic bids. Sorry Robert Morris, power 5 conference teams wouldnt get a pass losing to 6 teams from the Northeast conference and neither should you. This is collegiate athletics so we shouldn't be handing out participation trophies to terrible teams.

These 16 seed type teams schedule tough non-conference slates every year and typically get blasted by the "good" teams so it's not like in football where the small schools dont have a chance to prove themselves with maybe 1 marquee matchup. These smaller schools get 8-10 chances to prove they can hang with the big boys and if they fall flat on their face they dont deserve to get in just like any other team.

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Would ruin the tournament. There are still teams who got in via winning their conference tournament that have gone on runs that are now some of the most memorable moments in tourney history. In this format you have no FGCU, no Valpo, no Bucknell over Kansas, no Princeton over UCLA. It would lose a lot of it's luster and become a pretty bland product

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So the 64th best team cant go on a crazy run like this? Just because you recognize the name on the jersey doesn't make it any more crazy when they go on a run like that

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What?

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Say some team like KSU makes the tournament and upsets kentucky as the 1 v 16 seed. That would be just as entertaining as Bucknell taking down Kansas.