The NCAA Tournament expansion issue isn’t that complicated. Proponents of a larger tourney field mostly consist of high-ranking executives looking to increase revenue and stressed head coaches trying to help job security.

The rest of us can’t stand the idea of more mediocre bubble teams making the Big Dance. I’d rather decrease the size of the NCAA Tournament to 48-teams than expand.

However, no matter how much us peons fight, the higher-ups will win. They always do. We’ll see a 96-team field in a few years, we’ll all whine and cry about it, and eventually we’ll learn to love it.

But that doesn’t mean I can’t complain about the inevitable. I originally intended to make my own mock 96-team bracket to give the four dedicated readers of this column an idea of how watered down the field would be with an expanded field. Turns out, these guys already took care of my job.

That article was posted on Wednesday afternoon, but it’s updated enough to give us a rough idea of who’d be on the bubble under a 96-team set-up. It’s not pretty.

Imagine a world in which Miami, Boston College, Nevada, Oklahoma and St. John’s would be fighting for NCAA Tournament berths. The Red Storm are 2-7 in the Big East and just lost to Rutgers by double-digits. Miami is 2-6 in the ACC and has lost four of five—but both teams would still have a chance to make this mock 96-team bracket.

Again, I advise you to mentally prepare yourself for NCAA Tournament expansion. It’s happening. There’s money involved, and tons of it.

I can only hope that the NCAA follows Joe Lunardi’s request from his ESPN.com blog. Lunardi said he’d like to see regular-season champions get an automatic bid under an expanded field. I’d be all for that idea. Currently, the importance of small conferences’ regular seasons is diminished by the conference tournaments. I love the drama of Championship Week just like everyone else, but it’s hard to make the claim that a conference tournament title means more than a regular-season title. Lunardi’s proposed change might be the only good thing to come out of an expansion.

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