With the FIFA World Cup rolling and in full swing, I got to thinking about an interesting theoretical regarding college basketball—what if the NCAA tournament adapted the FIFA World Cup group stage format?

Now, I understand this completely and utterly deconstructs everything the NCAA tournament stands for. No more high stakes, single elimination matchups that help create the storylines we all know and love. However, the NCAA tournament possibly featuring a group play-in style on top of a traditional single-elimination bracket creates an interesting hypothetical that could allow for a more balanced demonstration of skill and preparation, particularly in the group stage.

Imagine the preparation and grit needed to survive in varying groups of three other hungry play-in teams looking to prove themselves on the biggest stage of college basketball–creating some intense, high-stake group stage matchups that would all but guarantee to entertain.

With the tournament recently expanding to 76 teams and the World Cup featuring only 48 nations, the immediate question becomes: How would you squeeze all 76 teams into the World Cup format?

Well, that’s exactly where things start to get interesting.

Especially now that the NCAA tournament has expanded to 76 teams, it would make more sense to immediately advance the best teams in the tournament straight to the single-elimination bracket, that way the group stage isn’t completely congested with too many teams.

With that in mind, 28 teams would immediately advance to the main bracket. I imagine these 28 teams would be all the teams seeded from 1 to 28, or the metrically best 28 teams in the field. There is a world where you can also make these teams the 28 automatically qualified conference champions, but that would require one to decide what three teams don’t make the cut, as there are 31 conferences in Division-I college basketball. So, for now we’ll simply say that the top 28 seeds advance immediately into the main bracket, skipping the groups.

Those remaining 48 teams would compete in group play, with groups being seeded similarly to how the World Cup is seeded. Instead of 32 teams advancing out of groups, 36 teams would make the cut in order to balance the main playoff field at 64 teams–bringing the main bracket back to that same sweet number. This just means that all third place teams will advance out of groups, instead of some being left out like in the World Cup.

With the group stage format, unlike the current tournament format, one cold shooting night won’t immediately end a team’s season, as a group stage would reward consistency across multiple games. Teams couldn't simply advance off one upset–they would need to prove themselves in all their group matchups before advancing. This might kill Cinderella to some extent–as many Cinderella teams thrive off opposing team’s bad performances. However, it can also be a means of these potential Cinderellas proving themselves with back-to-back quality performances, rather than a flukey one-off.

From there, the teams would be reseeded into the main bracket according to their group stage results, which could account for more accurate, performance-based seeding of lower-level teams as their seed accurately represents their group results against other tournament-caliber teams, rather than being seeded based off of what conference they play in or if they just so happened to have a weak schedule.

None of the group teams can be seeded above the 28 automatically qualified play-off teams, so it ensures that the top teams are protected in their seeding.

While this theoretical is fun to conjure up, I must admit there are definitely some kinks that would need to be ironed out. For example, I imagine it would be rather controversial that the group stage teams get to play a bunch of games and warm into the tournament whereas automatically qualified main bracket teams don’t get those games. Conversely, it could also be argued that group teams would be at a disadvantage after having to battle it out and wear themselves down in the group stage matches. Not to mention all the logistical things that would need to be figured out.

Regardless, I think the NCAA tournament–or any post-season tournament, for that matter–adapting the World Cup format would absolutely create an interesting parallel to the tournament we all know and love, especially as the tournament expands with more teams. While it may never be realistic to do so, I find it interesting to think if it one day did.

Will March Madness ever resemble the World Cup? Probably not. But as college athletics continues to evolve in unexpected ways, imagining what the future could look like is half the fun.