As you're filling out an NCAA basketball tournament bracket, realize that this might be the last time you see it in this form.

With 64 teams — sorry, 65 with the play-in game — involved, the bracket is perfectly designed. Six games are needed to win the national championship.

If the NCAA has its way, and it will, you might expect to see a 96-team bracket as early as next year.

If the NCAA backs out of its television deal with CBS and ESPN decides it's going to up the ante and win the contract, the NCAA most likely will increase the teams involved to 96 — with ESPN having enough channels to carry everything.

CBS doesn't and might not pay more to televise the tourney.

Good for ESPN. Good for the additional schools. Bad for you.

Having 96 teams definitely would water down the product. With 32 teams receiving a bye, the other 64 would battle in the preliminary round.

A 64-team field would begin in the second round.

If that's the case, count me out of filling out a bracket as well as watching this horrendous idea of a tournament.

Consider:

• What purpose would the regular season serve? Most conferences already have a championship tournaments with automatic NCAA playoff berths. The regular season is just for seeding and to secure at-large berths, which would be roughly 30 percent of all Division I teams.

• And what will determine the 32 teams that earn a bye? Conference tournament champions? Regular season champions? The polls?

• What about the National Invitational Tournament? Several decades ago, it was the NIT, not the NCAA Tournament, that was the big show.

Now, dubbed the Not Important Tournament, the NIT actually is a very competitive event. It's made up of bubble teams that missed the NCAAs and have something to prove or young squads that could be a year away from a breakout season.

What happens to the NIT? Will it be forced to grab 32 teams after then NCAA takes its field of 96?

• A New York Times story reported that the last time the NCAA Tournament expanded in 1985, the television contract was more than $27 million. The final year of the current contract with CBS is $750 million.

The number of Division I teams went from 284 in 1985 to 343 this year.

But when will this (March) madness end? Shouldn't playing in the NCAA Tournament mean something? I come from the school of thought that if it isn't broke, don't fix it.

The NCAA tournament creates the most sports buzz — sorry Super Bowl — even for those who just fill out a bracket in the office just to be a part of it.

It seems odd that the NCAA would want to tinker with this — it actually has something right — but it won't turn down all that extra money.

After all, someone other than your office pool winner has to make some money on this.

Sam Tallarico is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.