Rooney: Analyzing a 72-team tournament with 32 initial hosts

Here’s what this piece will not be: a thorough debate on the theoretical merits of an expanded postseason for college baseball. We’ll scratch the surface of that discussion but let’s save that deep dive for another day.

Here’s what we will do: look at an expanded version of the 2023 NCAA Baseball Tournament for illustrative purposes. That bracket is at the very bottom of this column. We will expand this year’s field to 72 teams. We will also deploy the “32 Hosts” model. So, before we debate the theoretical pros and cons of this idea, let’s unpack an actual example[…]