Rose Bowl Friday generally will be our regular space to cover anything of interest still in college sports, overall. We retired MNC Wednesday earlier this year, so this now becomes becomes the expected space for discussing things like March Madness expansion, which was in the news this week. We know it has it flaws, but the NCAA Tournament still represents one of the remaining quasi-good things in college sports today.

The idea(s) to expand by 4-to-8 teams, from the existing 68-team invitational, would not occur until 2025-2026 at the earliest, but it’s a good idea to expand access to the most popular sport in terms of Division I programs. Last season, there were 362 teams competing at the top level of men’s college basketball. With just 68 slots in the NCAA Tournament, that means less than 19 percent of schools can compete for the title.

Compare that to football, which had 133 teams competing at the Division I FBS level—yet only 4 spots in the College Football Playoff. We know that is changing to 12 teams this fall, but that still leaves a mere 9 percent of teams with a chance to qualify. Considering the sad state of the sport, we know those spots will go to schools that spend a lot of money, probably cheat, and make a lot of TV revenue money for the sport.

(Just like baseball, sadly … our two favorite sports, dying slow deaths due to corruption and greed. Sounds like microcosms of the greater human tragedy, in truth. But we digress!)

That’s why college basketball still is vastly superior to college football: access. Even if the same issue(s) plague both sports, at least the dream is more accessible in hoops. And now, that will improve. Due to the size of the sport, the tournament retains its integrity: the usual way a losing team makes it into the Big Dance is if they happen to win their conference tournament. That’s the idea: win until you lose, people.

Perhaps it’s the amateur roots of March Madness that make almost everyone root for the underdogs—unless your alma mater happens to be Goliath standing in front of those Davids, obvi. But this is a good move by the NCAA to add more teams. Everyone loves the NCAA Tournament, even if the odds on picking every single game result accurately are about to get much longer. That was always a pipe dream, anyway.