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By Jim Caltagirone
For the Mirror
The culture that promotes giving every kid a trophy continues to permeate college and professional sports in the segment of the schedule that matters most.
Over the years, there have been sporadic calls for the inclusion of all teams in the NCAA men's basketball tournament, which would have ballooned the field from 68 to 363 this year.
From a purely merit-based competitive standpoint, this stance is simply ridiculous.
If every team from every conference is provided free entry into the NCAA Tournament, then seeding and pride become the only motivating factors for elite programs to treat every game as critical to their postseason ambitions.
However, college and university administrators are considering an expansion of the field that may be the largest since 1985, when the number of teams was increased from 53 to 64.
Some pundits have speculated that the field could be increased to 80, 96 or 128 teams.
In contrast, 25 teams were in the field when UCLA's basketball dynasty began in 1964.
The tournament was expanded to 32 teams in 1975 when the Bruins won their 10th championship in 12 years.
The final decision on tournament expansion will most certainly be driven by revenue, which also factored into the tripling of the College Football Playoff field.
The NFL runs on the same economy.
With two weeks remaining in the regular season, 24 of the 32 teams were still alive for the fourteen playoff spots.
Optimism trended up in cities like New Orleans, Charlotte and Las Vegas, where a 6-9 record just a few years ago would have characterized the remaining games for those teams as meaningless.
This season, that same record kept the Saints, Panthers and Raiders "on the bubble."
Major League Baseball expanded its postseason field from 10 to 12 teams in 2022 by adding one wild-card entrant in each league.
Postseason tinkering included the creation of a best-of-three Wild Card Series, which served as the opening round.
Long gone are the days before division play when a team would clinch the league pennant weeks before the end of the regular season, leaving the rest of the circuit to play out the string before sparse crowds.
"The enthusiasm for the new postseason format makes me even more excited about the road ahead for the best sport in the world," wrote Rob Manfred, commissioner of Major League Baseball. "This postseason has been a great example of how change and a new approach can be good for our fans."
The NBA's play-in tournament, scheduled between the end of the regular season and the start of the playoffs, will be utilized for a third straight season.
The winners of the play-in tournament receive the seventh- and eighth-seeded positions in each conference.
In the NHL, the postseason field of 16 teams has remained the same since 1979-80, despite the addition of 10 teams to the league over four-plus decades.
In that respect, hockey may have supplanted baseball as the most traditional of American sports.
To survive, species in the natural world must demonstrate the ability to adapt to a changing environment.
In the sports world, an expanded postseason represents new life.
A team isn't necessarily born a champion. To develop into one, sometimes it just needs the opportunity for redemption that is so analogous with the postseason.
Especially a postseason where nearly every team gets to play.
Jim Caltagirone resides in Altoona. He is a monthly contributor to Voice of the Fan.