And make no mistake about it, it's the Florida States of the world who would primarily benefit, not the George Masons. Just look at the eight highest-seeded NIT teams: five of them were from power conferences. Expand to the 16 highest-seeded NIT teams, and the percentage grows: 12 of 16 are from either the BCS leagues or Conference USA. Those are the teams you'd mostly be adding if you had a field of 72 or a field of 80, not a bunch of new George Masons.

Moreover, an expanded field of the sort that the coaches are proposing would actually hurt the littlest of the little guys, the automatic bid winners from low-major leagues who make up the bulk of the #13 and lower seeds. As Ken Pomeroy writes:

Since all the new teams will be at-larges, and get seeds in the 11-13 range, the low-majors get screwed. Take Winthrop. As a 15-seed this season, they almost knocked off Tennessee. But under the new plan, they would have played on Tuesday in a fun-filled 16/17 game for the right to play a one-seed.

Expand the field to 80 teams, as Tubby Smith suggested, and it gets even worse. Almost all of the low-major teams currently seeded #13 through #16 would instead be seeded #17 through #20, and would face opening-round/play-in matchups against the newly admitted at-large teams. The survivors of that elimination derby would then proceed to face Top 4 seeds, who would have a bigger advantage than ever, since they'd be more rested than their opponents. We'd see fewer #2, #3 and #4 seeds falling victim to upsets and near-upsets, and the chances of a #16 (or #17) over #1 upset would become more remote than ever.

So, expanding the field to 68 or 72 or 80 teams would decrease the overall level of first-round drama provided by those delicious upsets; it would help the already-advantaged big guys at the expense of the already-disadvantaged little guys; and it's not like it would eliminate controversy. Instead of Hofstra getting snubbed, it'd be Old Dominion on the outside looking in. Instead of Florida State wondering why a win over Duke wasn't enough, it'd be Wake Forest wondering why wins over Florida State and N.C. State weren't enough. What's the point of this proposal again?

If people really want to give the little guys more of a chance to dance -- and the underachieving big guys, too, but not at the expense of the little guys -- I have a proposal that is far more radical, and better, than the ideas currently floating around. I mentioned it in comments a while back. It would sort of quasi-merge the NCAA and the NIT, creating a sort of preliminary round prior to the two tournaments, helping determine their respective fields. It would give automatic bids (sort of) to all regular-season conference champions, but without eliminating the incentive to play hard in the tourneys. It would create, in essence, a 96-team NCAA Tournament. Sort of.

Here's how it would work:

• As currently, the 31 conference tournament champions all receive automatic byes into the Round of 64. Actually, for the sake of making the math easier, I'm going to pretend there are 32 conferences; I'm sure a new one will spring into existence one of these years, and if not, it should be easy enough to adjust that aspect of my plan. But for now, let's say there are 32 conference tournament champs. They're in the Round of 64.

• There is also a group of teams who won their regular season conference titles but got tripped up in the conference tournament. That's probably about 8 to 12 teams per year, give or take; for the sake of simplicity, we'll say there are 10 of 'em. This includes everyone from UConn all the way down to Fairleigh Dickinson. All of those teams get automatic bids to the field of 96, but they don't get byes into the Round of 64; they have to play their way in, out of a massive "play-in" or "preliminary" round. More on that in a second.

• The 10 regular-season conference champs who didn't win their tourneys join 54 at-large teams in a 64-team preliminary round for the right to reach the actual NCAA Round of 64. It's basically a massive "play-in" round. But remember, none of these guys are the low-major conference-tournament champs; those guys are already in the Round of 64 automatically. The only low-major teams in the preliminary round are the regular-season champs who failed to win their conference tourneys. Anyway, the preliminary round is seeded just like a regular NCAA round, with the UConns of the world as #1 seeds and the Fairleigh Dickinsons as #16s. In terms of at-larges, you'd have roughly 25 teams who wouldn't otherwise have made it. So we're digging down to around the #6 or #7 seed line in the current NIT; Notre Dame would be in! :)

• The winners of the preliminary round advance to the NCAA Tournament Round of 64, where they'll play the auto-bid, auto-bye teams (the conference tourney winners). The Round of 64 would be re-seeded once the preliminary round is concluded and the teams are known; otherwise, you'd have the absurdity of #8 Monmouth vs #9 UConn. Clearly, there would need to be an extra weekend added (perhaps Selection Sunday gets moved to Thursday or Friday, and the preliminary round is on Sunday... it could all be in one day, imagine what a freakin' awesome day that would be), not just a play-in round two days before the tourney kicks off. So the automatic bids wouldn't have an inordinate advantage... but at the same time, they will have some advantage, and that's good! They earned it, by winning their conference tournaments (not just by being powerhouse teams). Let's see Tennessee try and play Winthrop when Winthrop is the more-rested, better-prepared team!

• Meanwhile, the preliminary round losers aren't done, either. They advance to a 32-team NIT! Why not? The NCAA now controls both tournaments, after all. Hell, you could get really fancy and send the early-round NCAA losers over to the NIT as well, creating a quasi-double-elimination tournament, if you want to. But I think using my hypothetical 64-team preliminary round as an NIT/NCAA cutoff round would work plenty well all by itself.

• My plan has the benefit that it actually improves the lot of low-major and mid-major teams who struggle in their conference tournaments after a good season. For the mid-majors, there's a better chance of an at-large, and for the low-majors, they're guaranteed at least a chance -- albeit a longshot one -- if they win the regular-season title. But at the same time, the conference tourneys don't lose their significance. This is important, because you don't want to create widespread perverse incentives for the little conferences. You know how everybody in the WCC knew that the only way they could become a two-bid league in 2006 would be if Gonzaga had lost in the conference tourney? Well, if you give automatic bids to both regular-season and tournament champions, you create that situation for every low-major conference, every single year. But by giving the tournament champs a bye out of the qualifying round and into the Round of 64, you give them something to play for, even as everyone else is playing for a shot at knocking them off and making a run to the Dance.

(Hat tip: Scott F and JohnMac, who got me thinking along these lines.)