Tom Izzo compares NCAA Tournament format to College Football Playoff

One of the things that’s unique about college sports is the varying formats for a postseason. The NCAA Tournament, for example, is very, very different from the College Football Playoff.

Could the latter expand to start to look like the former? Michigan State basketball coach Tom Izzo weighed in on that topic on The Triple Option podcast recently.

“You know, the one thing you don’t have that basketball has that I still, I’m a small college guy, but usually if it’s four or 12 you’ve got the best 12 teams,” Izzo said. “We still have this Cinderella stuff. And Cinderella has landed on my shoe a couple times, too.”

One of the things that makes March Madness March Madness is the potential for wild upsets. Those are harder to come by in a College Football Playoff where there are only 12 teams total.

By and large, the better teams in football prevailed in this year’s inaugural edition of the 12-team format. Not so in basketball, even though this year has been more chalky than most in getting to the Sweet 16.

And there are other problems the basketball format presents. Izzo knows it all too well.

“When you’re going 2-15 it’s hard because players don’t respect the teams as much,” Izzo said. “Media doesn’t respect them. But as coach knows, we respect everybody because those things happen.

“We were beaten by Middle Tennessee, we had a really good team in I think ’16 and everybody says, ‘Well, you overlooked them.’ We were the best defensive team in the country statistically. They shot 56% against us, 53% from three. It was one of those nights that the damned ball went in. And we got beat and I thought that was a Final Four team.”

The point being that you can’t count anything as a given in the NCAA Tournament. The College Football Playoff tends to be a little more orderly.

“So I don’t know, but I don’t think that can happen in football,” Izzo said. “It’s just the bigger, stronger teams. I don’t think you can let the smaller programs in, even though there’s some good ones. When you were at Bowling Green you were probably good. There’s been some teams, Northern Illinois. There’s been some good, small college teams but, boy, I don’t know if you could do that and I don’t know if you’d want to do that.

“First of all, you couldn’t play as many games. It’s taxing enough on these guys, and you start adding another game and another game and then injuries and all the things go. I don’t think you could do that.”

Food for thought when it comes to College Football Playoff expansion. More is not always necessarily better.