The late season drama of expansion has culminated in a new "First Four" round for the 68 team NCAA Tournament, with eight teams competing in the new "First Round", with the four lowest-seeded teams facing off and the four last at-large teams playing their way into the real field of 64.  The feeling is universal among play-in games - the small conferences hate it (even though it comes with a standard winner's share for the winning team), and now the bigger conferences get to hate it too.  When you have two competing sides, in this case large conferences and small conferences, compromise is supposed to involve something that is acceptable to all parties.  Instead, the NCAA has settled on a compromise that will piss everyone off.  That takes some serious skill. 

     Of course the NCAA wants to ease the worried small conferences from being permanently stuck in Play-In Game Hell, so the play-in games will now involve the last four at-large teams.  That's fine, except now there are two more small conference teams in the play-in round.  The NCAA came up with a "compromise" that actually makes the situation worse for both small and large conferences.  These scenarios should really be investigated thoroughly before the idiots on the committee blurt out to the media "Hey- we're going to expand the tournament!".  After the debacle of expanding the field to 65, the idea of 68 is not much of a stretch to the committee - more games means more money, right?  Not when you compromise the integrity of the rest of the tournament.  I understand that they tried to be fair, but they screwed it up royally.  Guess what NCAA?  There is no good way of expanding the tournament.