Tournament Expansion Decision: 68 teams.

First, The NCAA tournament expansion debate appears to be concluded for the near-term.  Most people were convinced that the NCAA would use their "out" this year in their contract with CBS to jump over to the ESPN family of networks and at the same time, kill off the historic NIT and expand the NCAA tourney to 96 teams.  Surprisingly, the NCAA has recommended to their board of directors that the tournament expand from 65 to 68 teams... Which in effect will likely add a play-in game to define all four regional #16 seeds.  They will also stay with CBS, though they've come to an agreement which will see all games televised through the use of the Turner family of cable channels.

I think this is a very reasonable decision and quite a bit better than the 96-team scenario.  I set out to do some research on NCAA Division I Basketball expansion versus NCAA Tournament expansion with the thesis that D1 has expanded more quickly than the tournament has and that some expansion was overdue... And that even 96 teams would be reasonable in that frame of reference.  Well, my thesis was completely wrong.  Since 1979 or so the number of tournament invites has hovered at right around 20% of the number of teams playing D1 basketball.  The tourney in 1979 invited 40 teams, and since has expanded five times (to 48, 52, 53, 64, and 65 teams respectively).  Expanding from 65-68 takes us from 19% back to 20% and therefore seems to follow the precedent.  96 would have indeed be a little ridiculous, taking us to nearly 1/3 of all D1 programs making the tourney.