ESPN’s Joe Lunardi On ACC’s All-Inclusive NCAA Tournament Plan: ‘Won’t Work’

ESPN bracket expert Joe Lunardi gives his reasoning why the all-inclusive NCAA tournament proposed by the head coaches of the Atlantic Coast Conference won’t work.

CHAMPAIGN, Ill. -- Arguably the most famous NCAA tournament bracket expert has never been a fan of increasing the current 68-team men’s basketball field. Therefore, you can guess how Joe Lunardi feels about this new proposal to expand the 2021 NCAA tournament field to all eligible Division I schools.

Simply take one of his multi-day online NCAA tournament Bracketology seminar classes (of which the editor/publisher of Illini Now/Sports Illustrated did this past summer) and he’ll properly explain in one of his lectures why even a 96-team field would stress the selection committee and water down the product referred to as ‘March Madness’. So, a 346-team field? Lunardi doesn’t see it happening.

“The bracket itself, while amusing, would tax even the best of us,” Lunardi said to Illini Now/SI and wrote in his editorial analysis on ESPN.com. “The basic math dictates that 166 teams receive opening round byes. The remaining 180 would play 90 additional games to create a symmetrical field of 256 teams, followed by a tidy eight-round gauntlet through the Final Four.”

Stadium.com reporter Jeff Goodman first confirmed the Atlantic Coast Conference voted Wednesday morning in unanimous approval to have an all-inclusion NCAA tournament and the idea is being pushed by Duke head coach Mike Krzyzewski.

Updated Statement from Coach K on NCAA Tournament Expansion Concept pic.twitter.com/4hyw0MdoNw

— Duke Men’s Basketball (@DukeMBB) September 9, 2020

Lunardi, who has been compiling mock brackets since the mid-1990s and has his first bracket projection hit ESPN.com in 2002, expressed his opinion on a possible 346-team NCAA tournament and no, he’s not a fan.

“(The ACC coaches) idea to conduct an all-inclusive NCAA tournament in 2021, however well-intentioned, color me skeptical, is going to crash against the rocks,” Lunardi said.

C’mon man... let’s give these kids some hope for the tournament after all they have been through over the past year! pic.twitter.com/RccGRta6Bt

— Mike Brey (@CoachMikeBrey) September 9, 2020

Lunardi points out the obvious logistics of how a 346-team tournament bubble.

“Conservatively estimating each school's travel party at 25, we're going to repeatedly test and quarantine more than 8,000 people? Just so half of them can lose and go home after 40 minutes of basketball? I don't think so,” Lunardi said.

NCAA president Mark Emmert said in August that a possible NCAA tournament scenario in a bubble environment, similarly to how The Basketball Tournament in Columbus, Ohio, played out during the coronavirus pandemic, with fewer than 68 teams could occur.

"Starting with 64 teams is tough. Thirty-two, OK, maybe that's a manageable number. Sixteen, certainly manageable. But you've got to figure out those logistics," Emmert said in an interview on NCAA.com last month. "It's obviously expensive to do that but we're not going to hold a championship in a way that puts student-athletes at risk. If we need to do a bubble model and that's the only way we can do it, then we'll figure that out."

The NCAA Division I Council is expected to announce a decision for the format for winter sports, including men's and women's basketball, on Sept. 16.

NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball Dan Gavitt said last month that he expects a start date and universal schedule format for a 2020-21 college basketball season will be announced in the middle of this month. Gavitt’s leadership for Division I college basketball is to be looked upon as a pseudo-commissioner that Power 5 Conference college football doesn’t have.

As we prepare for the 2020-21 college basketball season, we have exercised patience and discipline in monitoring the effects of COVID-19 and making decisions regarding the season. We have learned a great deal over the course of the summer, and with health and safety being our priority, we have developed and studied contingency plans for alternatives to the scheduled Nov. 10 start date,” Gavitt said in August. “In the coming weeks, the NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Oversight Committees will take the lead with me in a collaborative process of finalizing any recommendations for consideration by the NCAA Division I Council for the start of the college basketball season. By mid-September, we will provide direction about whether the season and practice start on time or a short-term delay is necessitated by the ongoing pandemic.”