On America's day of football festivus — Super Bowl Sunday — we come to the floor to debate the obvious topic:

NCAA men's basketball tournament expansion.

Proving again that some ideas are so bad they just won't die, the NCAA continues to float the idea of expanding March Madness to 96 teams. The Associated Press reported last week that the college sports governing body is discussing the idea with college hoops stakeholders.

Given the realities of big-time college sports, one suspects the NCAA's ultimate motive is to create more television "programming inventory" from its most lucrative event to ensure that the rights fees to televise March Madness go up in the future.

After the current college hoops season, the NCAA can opt out of the final three years of its 11-year, $6 billion contract with CBS.

The belief is that the next TV contract to carry the tournament might be a partnership between a cable outlet (say ESPN or Turner Sports) and an over-the-air network (CBS, ABC, maybe even Fox). An expanded tourney would create more games to sustain such an arrangement.

In an era of expanding basketball parity, some back the concept of a larger tourney because they think there are simply more tournament-worthy teams now than in the past.

Many coaches are behind the idea because they think an expanded NCAA tourney means greater job security for coaches.

With the exception (which I will get to) of one minor expansion scenario, here are five reasons why "growing" the NCAA tourney is wrong-headed.

Reason One: It makes the bracket too unwieldy.

The NCAA likes to pretend this isn't true, but what has made March Madness into a must-see national event is people filling out brackets for tournament pools. In a 96-team event, you likely end up with 32 byes and 64 teams playing first-round "play-in" games.

That's way too messy. In our attention span-challenged society, you don't want to make things more complicated.

Reason Two: It's not going to save coaching jobs.

In college football, bowl games have expanded to such an extent that mediocre teams frequently make the post-season. Mark Snyder (Marshall), Charlie Weis (Notre Dame), and Bobby Bowden (Florida State) might tell you that having your team bowl-eligible is no guarantee of keeping one's job.

If you water down NCAA Tournament entrance, a bid is not going to save a coach's job if the perception is the program is underperforming.

Reason Three: It further devalues the regular season.

At the national level, the main problem with college basketball now is that the regular season means so little, everything is the three weeks of March Madness (say what you will about the injustices of the BCS, but every week of the college football season matters).

Add 31 more teams to the NCAA tourney, there are correspondingly fewer regular-season games that have actual consequence.

If you do expand to 96, Duke's Mike Krzyzewski suggests putting some meaning back in the regular season by ensuring that any conference champion be guaranteed an NCAA bid regardless of how they fare in their league tournament.

That, at least, is an idea worth exploring.

Reason Four: It's not horrible if some good teams miss the NCAA.

Even at 65 teams, the NCAA tourney rewards the good, not just the excellent. At 96, you'd be rewarding the middling. The tournament doesn't need a plethora of 16-13 teams from the so-called Big Six conferences.

Reason Five: You're fixing something that isn't broken.

As presently constituted, the NCAA Tournament is the three best weeks of the American sports year. Don't mess with it (well, not much).

Which brings us to an expansion proposal that does make sense — going from the current 65-team bracket to 68 teams.

Currently, two teams have a "play-in" game to become one of the No. 16 seeds. There is a certain stigma in being one of the teams forced to play their way into the regular bracket. However, if you added three teams to the tourney, you could have four such games, which I believe would remove any onus.

You could play a doubleheader in Dayton, Ohio, (current host to the NCAA opening-round game) and a doubleheader in another venue with strong basketball interest and a centralized location (Bowling Green, Ky., anyone?)

Bottom line: When it comes to the NCAA tourney, 68 would be great; anything more would be a mistake.