Tourney field is just too big

I’m pretty sure Dr. James Naismith didn’t have anything quite like this in mind.

The athletes in this year’s NCAA Tournament would have torn up a hell of a lot of peach baskets.

Quick note here so you can win a bar bet: Naismith is the only coach in University of Kansas history who wound up with a losing career record.

I guess if you invent a sport, you’re allowed a little leeway. Besides, that was before KU needed the TV money.

Anyway, back to the good doctor.

Naismith never could have imagined the quality of athletes who now have turned his sport into something else entirely.

And he certainly would have been gobsmacked at the idea of 68 teams — the least talented of whom are nonetheless filled with gifted physical players — playing out “March Madness” all the way to April 3 in front of a nation that stops in its collective tracks to watch every thunderous dunk.

There are also work breaks for everyone to check his or her personal “brackets.”

IF THE doc somehow could have jumped ahead in time to see what his rainy-day recreation at the Springfield YMCA has wrought, I suspect he’d say something very similar to what I’m about to suggest.

“Why are there so many teams in this silly thing, when only a handful of them have even a ghost of a chance to win it?”

There were too many teams in the tournament BEFORE the committee of money-changers in the temple decided that they could milk sponsors for a few more bucks with these ridiculous play-in games.

The tournament starts tonight with Wake Forest and Kansas State going hammer and tongs for the last remaining No. 11 seed.

It’s worth noting, by the way, that no team seeded ninth or lower has ever won the championship.

The ultimate in silliness came in 2011, when Connecticut – which had finished ninth in the “old” Big East – actually won the whole thing by beating Butler in a game that nearly set the sport back to Naismith’s peach baskets.

The teams combined for just 41 points by halftime, leading CBS commentator Greg Anthony to say: “That was the worst half of basketball ever seen in a national championship game.”

Connecticut’s “title” rekindled the question of whether conference championships were no longer meaningful at all.

I mean, if you finish ninth (with a 9-9 record) and STILL play in the NCAA tournament...

I’m no fan of Bobby Knight, but I’ll give the rude old curmudgeon credit for one thing: He believed that winning the Big Ten was a major achievement, and that was his only goal.

No kidding, when Indiana won a national championship on a last-second shot, these were Knight’s first words at a post-game interview: “Winning the conference was harder, because it took a whole season.”

IT’S BEEN some time — but not exactly the peach-basket era — since the NCAA basketball tournament was conducted like most collegiate sports championships.

In other words, you took the few best teams from each conference or each region, and let them settle it.

There were 16 teams, four from each region of the country, and it worked out amazingly well.

For instance, John Wooden’s miraculous dynasty at UCLA was interrupted in 1966, in part because freshmen like Lew Alcindor and Lucius Allen were not eligible then.

Also, however, what could have been a nine-year title streak was halted because the Bruins didn’t win their conference title and thus didn’t qualify for the NCAA Tournament.

Now, of course, pretty much everyone is eligible. Some are not particularly worthy, as the ludicrous record of No. 1 seeds against No. 16 seeds (128-0) might suggest.

But there’s a fortune in this bizarre event — for sponsors, for CBS and several affiliates, for ESPN and its legion of analysts, for bookies (legal and illegal), for pool winners, for everybody.

And hey, isn’t that what sports are all about?

Maybe they can add another 16 teams next year.

Steve Cameron is a special assignment reporter for The Press. You can reach Steve at [email protected].