NCAA Tournament Expansion To 68 teams?

Many deserving teams are often left out of the NCAA Tournament fold, which provides an opportunity at the highest postseason prize. As a result, member institutions have considered expanding the tournament field. While many numbers been thrown around, the number most recently visited is 68.

The novice would see this as an incident move aimed at including more at-large teams. A fan of equity and justice knows exactly what's up. To be brief, this means four play-in games instead of one. The significance of this is that four teams among the lowest eight seeds in the tournament will be denied participation in the actual pool of 64 teams (i.e. the one that everyone watches).

Here's the seeding average of the perennial one-bid conferences over the last three years:

1) SWAC: 16.0
2) MEAC: 16.0
3) Mid-Continent: 15.7
4) Northeast: 15.7
5) Big South: 15.0
6) Southland: 15.0
7) America East: 14.7
T8) Southern: 14.3
T8) Big Sky: 14.3

Other Notable Seeding Averages:
Atlantic Sun: 14.0
Ivy: 14.0
Ohio Valley: 13.7
Sun Belt: 13.7
Patriot: 13 (buoyed by Bucknell's recent surge)

In the end, the teams listed above suffer by not being able to participate in the real NCAA tournament, which starts on Thursday just after noon with Greg Gumbel previewing the games, Clark Kellogg talking about spurtability, and Seth Davis sounding intelligent yet annoying.