PITTSBURGH — I'm as crotchety and stuck in my ways as anyone.

I mean, I was already an old man yelling at clouds in about 1990 and have always been somewhat of a traditionalist when it comes to sports.

But even I have been able to adapt and accept the new world of college athletics — the transfer portal, NIL, the stipends and salaries, the conference realignments, the football playoffs and everything in between. The world of college athletics is ever-changing and evolving, and there is no stopping it now.

But somebody has to pay for all of this new stuff, and that's why all of these administrators, college presidents and athletic directors are brainstorming ways to create new revenue streams.

That is a long-winded way to say the NCAA men's basketball tournament is going to expand, and it is going to expand because it will create more revenue. There is no other reason for it to expand other than making more money, and quite frankly, that has become the way of the world in college athletics — follow the money.

And that is also why I am OK with expansion of the tournament, as much as I hate the idea of more mediocre teams getting into the field. Truth be told, if it were up to me, there would be no automatic bids and only 32 teams would make it — the best 32 teams. But it isn't up to me.

I long ago accepted the charm of the 64-team field complete with all the automatic qualifiers and Cinderellas, so this newest effort to expand the tournament is just sort of more of the same.

There is a large pushback by many people who love college basketball, as they don't want to see the NCAA Tournament changed. This especially is true among many of the national college basketball media members who have taken to the airwaves and social media to beg the NCAA to leave the tournament alone.

Again, I am as old and stuck in my ways as anyone, but I have to be honest: All of you fighting expansion of the NCAA Tournament are misguided and wasting energy. It is time to just relax, understand the lay of the land and realities of big-time college athletics and understand this expansion of the tournament was always inevitable.

For one thing, this isn't the first time the tournament has expanded. In the last three times, it was universally agreed that the tournament was improved. The tournament expanded in 1985, 2001 and then again in 2011, and all that really changed in the last two expansions is that they added a few play-in games.

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