The NCAA Division I men's basketball committee effectively killed any expansion hope for the NCAA Tournament last week, voting to keep the field at 65 teams and turning down a request from the National Association of Basketball Coaches to make the tournament more inclusive.

It didn't come as a surprise. The committee and the NCAA hierarchy made it clear that no one wanted to tamper with the runaway success of the tournament, and that the field was plenty large for their liking.

Of course it is. Seven of the 10 committee members hail from leagues that traditionally get multiple teams into the tournament field.

There's no arguing the success of the event. For almost a month of March Madness, college basketball takes center stage nationally. But to assume that a field expansion would detract from that success is to ignore history.

The NCAA Tournament wasn't even a blip on the radar screen when it was first held in 1939 with eight teams. It wasn't until around the time it expanded and eventually went to 32 teams in 1975 that America began to pay attention.

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Dan McDonald
dmcdonald@theadvertiser.com