You may have heard the ongoing discussion surrounding the expansion of the NCAA Division I men's basketball tournament.

Coaches and conference commissioners have all weighed in with mixed opinions. On one had, the current 65-team field is not a broken system, so many wonder if fixing it is necessary (if only the BCS had the same philosophy).

Others have pointed to the fact that there are now 343 Division I basketball teams competing for the 65 slots. There were 284 D-I teams in 1985 when the tourney expanded from 48 to 64. Whether the NCAA ought to add 31 more slots for 59 more schools is a question worth asking.

While it would certainly be entertaining to add another weekend to March (and presumably, April) Madness, it would also make the NIT more irrelevant.

When my dad was growing up in the early '70s, the NIT was still a viable event that people other than fans with teams playing in it actually watched. Winning the NIT was still something of which a school could be proud.

What's the incentive of winning the NIT now? Finding 12 normal people and that six-fingered guy from "The Princess Bride" to hold up 66 fingers?

I can only recall watching one NIT game in my life: last March when Washington State lost to St. Mary's in Moraga, Calif.

Last year's Cougs would likely have qualified for a 96-team NCAA Tournament, but this years' team went on a late-season swoon usually reserved for the football team, so I really do not have a vested interest in a larger tournament this year.

But as college sports become ever more professionalized, it only seems to make sense to expand the field. As I wrote in my February 19 column, "boom, more (NCAA) income, more t-shirts, more banners, more money spent on hotel rooms and restaurants and more exposure for great players on merely good teams (see, Curry, Stephen and Santangelo, Matt)."

And would states follow suit and consider expanding their high school state tournaments?

Unlikely, but at least the NCAA tournament selection committee takes strength of schedule, conference and RPI into account as it selects its field.

In the NCAA (and the NAIA, for that matter), conferences/leagues/regions with multiple good teams and strong traditions are rewarded with multiple berths.

That is why you could see eight Big East teams in the tournament while only the Northeast Conference tournament champion earns a berth.

You might think the state of Iowa does not have the resources or such fancy computer programs at their disposal, but thanks to economist Brent Moore at Iowa State University, we have power rankings that tell us which teams belong at the top.

And guess what? Moore's rankings at the conclusion of the regular season on March 2 correctly predicted all of the boys state champions and selected 19 of the 32 teams in the four-class field.

What we learned from this week's state tournament is that Northwest Iowa may well warrant consideration as the strongest region of basketball in the state.

Three of the four NW Iowa representatives won their classes (Rock Valley, Western Christian and Heelan) while Sioux City East ran into nationally-ranked Ames in the semifinals and wound up finishing fourth.

It's also worth noting that the state was likely one double-overtime Western Christian semifinal loss last season from having repeat champions in all four classes and three of those schools are from NW Iowa.

There are 382 Iowa high schools that play basketball and they receive the equivalent of a 32-team field.

At the risk of sounding like a corrupted MP3 file, if any organization should be thinking about expanding its field, it's the IHSAA, not the NCAA.