Why mess with perfection?

Expanding the 65-team field in the NCAA men’s basketball tournament to an outrageous 128 would effectively remove the Madness from March. There would be no penalty for a poor finish or a weak schedule. There would be no nervous anticipation sitting in front of your television on Selection Sunday, awaiting Jim Nantz’s declaration of whether your beloved team’s bubble burst. And there would be no Michigan Invitation Tournament, an Ann Arbor spring staple.

The NCAA will certainly reject the National Association of Basketball Coaches’ proposal to increase the tournament teams to 128. They’ll reject it because the NCAA is all about maximizing revenue streams, and adding another 64-game tier to the national tournament wouldn’t necessarily ensure enough extra money to offset the sudden irrelevance to the regular season.

Sometimes, less is more.

But that doesn’t mean the NCAA won’t consider a more modest expansion at its basketball committee meetings in Orlando. The most sensible approach is increasing the field to 68.

The NCAA could take the bottom eight teams, most likely the conference tournament champions of the weakest leagues, and send them to Dayton, Ohio, the Tuesday before the tournament for a day of play-in games. The four winners would face the No. 1 seeds.

This plan would create three additional at-large invitations and the NCAA could mandate that at least one must go to a team from outside the six major conferences.

“Who are the other George Masons out there?” Patriots coach Jim Larranaga said during an ESPN interview Monday afternoon. “Those are the ones that we want to find. I don’t want those bids just going to the bigger conferences. I want to reward those mid-major teams who wouldn’t ordinarily get a chance.”

The NABC uses George Mason’s phenomenal run to this year’s Final Four as part of the impetus for its expansion proposal. George Mason was one of the last teams in the tournament, a selection that was roundly criticized nationally by many who believed others from the ACC and Big Ten were more deserving.

The coaches are wrong.

They aren’t worried about all the good teams who aren’t making the NCAA Tournament field. They’re worried that when they don’t make the tournament, they lose alumni and booster support and inevitably their jobs.

Tommy Amaker is in trouble at Michigan because he has yet to get the program beyond the NIT.

But how is being the 98th team in a weakened, 128-team field worthy of accolades and contract extensions?

The NCAA will never seriously consider any idea hatched from their coaches because they are anti-coach. The high priests of hypocrisy who run college athletics’ governing body already believe the coaches are too powerful, too influential and continually look for ways to further strip them of their sway.

And the tournament is the NCAA’s baby. It will pacify the coaches to a certain extent, but the only input that truly dictates NCAA policy is the ringing of the cash registers.