The Ghost of Myles Brand comes clean

Drew mentions both sides in his post, and I have to be honest (and hopefully not annoying) in using this to reply. There is one giant hurdle with the NCAA and expanding the tournament. Before I get to that, I'll list the minor bumps that won't bother this cash cow at all:

1. Either way, they make a shitload of money. Sure, they give some of that to schools. Some.
2. Their placing the same bland court on each site. This is a personal annoyance, but keeping the regular court was just as much the fun of it. When you're watching games, how do you know the difference if the game is in Salt Lake City, New Orleans, or Providence? You don't, which is pretty annoying. I couldn't figure out what game I was watching, which was maybe their point.
3. Jim Nantz made sure to mention the tribute to Brand on the court of the Final Four. Clark Kellogg, as a good employee, echoed the statements. Brand always did a good job of stroking both sides of the NCAA lifeblood: the money, and the schools.

Brand, as President of the NCAA, was keen to point out that it wasn't exactly beneficial for the largest schools to adopt a win at any cost view. He didn't do anything about it because, well, there's nothing he could do.

Brand also made public the graduation rates of each school's basketball team. This usually came up around tournament time. Ah...now here's a chance to enforce something. Such as, if your graduation is below a certain percentage, you can't play in the tournament. Whether you agree with that kind of rule or not, it's something he COULD have enforced.

But like the parent who simply calls out the child of his problems to make them known and then does nothing about it, the problem (it's only a problem to the NCAA, not the schools, of course) wouldn't go away. Myles would just smile and cash in the free spa visit ticket from Dick Vitale.

The expansion of the tournament comes down to one thing. And if the NCAA simply comes to terms and admits this, it can pave the way for a Division I football tournament.

A LOT OF THE BASKETBALL PLAYERS DON'T TAKE A LOT OF CLASSES. THEIR GRADES AREN'T THAT GREAT. CLASS ISN'T AS OR MORE IMPORTANT THAN THE GAME. IF WE'RE PLAYING, ESPECIALLY IN THE TOURNAMENT, SCHOOL CAN JUST FUCK OFF.

Whew. Felt good. That's the elephant in the room. Can we all admit this? Once we get past it, we can deal with 90 schools in a tournament...40 of which are actually any good. But that's the fence, NCAA. You gonna climb over it?