[oldalum]

What I meant was, if the NCAA paid for travel as I believe it does now, teams would not have an incentive to minimize it, which would raise the cost of the tournament for the NCAA and reduce its profitability--which I assume would be anathema to the NCAA. If teams were responsible for their own travel costs for the NCAA tournament, the NCAA would be happy with that arrangement from a financial standpoint, but it would be seen as skewing the tournament in favor of richer schools who could "buy" their way to better matchups. The ITA Indoors is an optional pre-season tournament, while the NCAA tournament is the whole tamale.

[oldalum]

What I meant was, if the NCAA paid for travel as I believe it does now, teams would not have an incentive to minimize it, which would raise the cost of the tournament for the NCAA and reduce its profitability--which I assume would be anathema to the NCAA. If teams were responsible for their own travel costs for the NCAA tournament, the NCAA would be happy with that arrangement from a financial standpoint, but it would be seen as skewing the tournament in favor of richer schools who could "buy" their way to better matchups. The ITA Indoors is an optional pre-season tournament, while the NCAA tournament is the whole tamale.