"Say NO to NCAA tournament expansion": Hoops Insider scraps latest proposal to expand 68-team bracket while taking swipe at UNC

The issue of the NCAA Tournament expansion has dominated headlines in the past few weeks with calls from the governing body and conferences to increase the field to between 72 and 76 teams. During the Big 12 spring meetings, NCAA president Charlie Baker also revealed that the matter was undergoing serious consideration ahead of next season.

During Monday's segment of the "CBS Sports" podcast, analyst Jon Rothstein was indignant at the prospect of the Big Dance being expanded while pinpointing the North Carolina Tar Heels' controversial inclusion in this year's edition as evidence of the tournament being watered down.

He captioned the post:

"Just say NO to NCAA Tournament Expansion," Rothstein wrote.

Rothstein further said:

"Let's start with the NCAA Tournament," Rothstein said. "Shouldn't the greatest tournament in sports be an exclusive club? Shouldn't the greatest tournament in sports be something you have to work for? Because if you cover the NCAA Tournament and if you cover college basketball like I do, you know this, every single year all we talk about is how weak the bubble has gotten.

"I am not wavering in what I said on Selection Sunday last year, 'North Carolina making the NCAA Tournament was the most unfathomable decision that I have ever seen by the selection committee in 20 years of doing this on national beat.' If UNC was good enough to get into the tournament last year as the 68th team out of 68 participants and there is a notion just a few months later that the NCAA hopes to expand the event?"

NCAA Tournament expansion plan gets president's green light

The issue of the Big Dance expansion has seen support grow from within the game, including from influential Big 12 and SEC commissioners Brett Yormark and Greg Sankey.

During the Big 12 spring meetings on Thursday, the NCAA president Charlie Baker gave his green light for the plan to move to the voting stage.

"We've had good conversations with CBS and WBD," Baker said. "Our goal here is to try to sort of get to either yes or no sometime in the next few months because there's a lot of logistical work that would be associated with doing this. If we were to go down this road, you just think about the opening weekends, who has to travel the longest, it gets complicated."

The last time that March Madness saw an expansion was in 2011, when the field moved from 65 to 68 teams, introducing the first round of games pitting the lowest-seeded at-large teams and the lowest-seeded conference champions.