If the NCAA can be selfish, so can I.

So if the NCAA wants to be selfish and implement a 96-team NCAA Tournament, a March Madness that no college basketball analyst or fan wants to see, I can direct my frustration on the pending decision solely to the team I root for-Northwestern. I don’t care how it is going to affect any other aspect of the college game outside my team in Evanston.

It’s going to happen, whether we like it or not, but it doesn’t have to be next season. If University President Morton O. Schapiro and Athletic Director Jim Phillips bleed purple as passionately as it seems, they will use their influence to keep this from happening in 2011.

Before the Final Four last week, the “glorious minds” that make up the NCAA-led by Greg Shaheen, the NCAA Vice President for basketball and strategies-held a press conference discussing the potential plan to expand the NCAA Tournament to 96 teams. Earlier in the week, Big Ten Commissioner Jim Delaney, one of the actual glorious minds of college sports, said that expansion was “probable.”

See, this is a lose-lose situation for NU, and that’s really all I care about. If the Wildcats-the only team in the BCS conferences to never make the Dance in 71 years-finally end their nationally-known futility and make the 96-team NCAA Tournament, it will be diminished by the fact that just about every big-name team should make a 96-team tournament. And if NU doesn’t make the NCAA Tournament next season (assuming it’s 96 teams), it would be an embarrassment for the program. Not to mention a format change for next season means NU would still be the only BCS school to never make the 64-team tournament.

Let’s start with some facts. The NCAA cares about one thing: money. OK, maybe that’s just a conjecture, but you’d be hard-pressed to find someone who doesn’t consider the NCAA a money-hawking organization. They see in dollar signs, not in the grades or off-the-field achievements of their student-athletes. Conference tournaments and the regular season will mean less, and fans will be outraged while dollars for the NCAA will go up.

Everyone knows next year is the best chance NU has to finally make the Big Dance and end 71 years of futility. With Kevin Coble back and highly-touted recruit JerShon Cobb, anything less than the NCAA Tournament next year would be a disappointment. But would anyone care if the Cats made a 96-team tournament? Would CBS send cameras to Welsh-Ryan Arena during what would be a two-hour Selection Show? Would fans go crazy when “Northwestern” flashed across the screen? Sure it would be an accomplishment, but is that what the players want? Is that what coach Bill Carmody, a man who has gone through so many ups and downs in his career in Evanston and finally has his team on the brink of school history, wants? And unfortunately recent disappointments in NU athletics force me to beg the question: What if they don’t make a 96-team tournament next year with Coble, Cobb, Michael “Juice” Thompson, John Shurna and Drew Crawford? Would any recruit want to come to Evanston after that?

That’s not the way I want to see it, and that’s not the way any NU fan should get to celebrate an athletic achievement as monumental as the football team’s trip to the 1995 Rose Bowl. As a college basketball fan, I think this an absurd and greedy proposition that further illustrates the NCAA’s sole focus on revenue. But it is an even more egregious plan when viewed as a NU fan; this decision would deprive our basketball program of a historic Selection Sunday in 2011 and replace it with a bid handed out like candy to any team that finishes with a winning record. The Cats, Carmody, Coble and everyone who has followed and supported this program deserve better than a first-ever bid to a 96-team joke of a tournament. Sports Columnist Kevin Fishbain is a Medill senior. He can be reached at [email protected].