As the exhaustively beloved NCAA tournament comes blessedly upon us within these very hours, its most relevant advance information came decisively from a somewhat unexpected source.

Nowhere in the high tide of bracketology, RPI theory, Bernoulli's principles of seeding, or even the irrefutable wisdom of the talk-show caller who Monday blurted, "Boy you hit the nose right on the head," was there a more fascinating observation than one offered by Greg Kampe.

Kampe coaches the Oakland Golden Grizzlies, who happen to be Pitt's first-round opponent tomorrow at Bradley Center in Milwaukee. His reputation might not resonate coast-to-coast, but his candor ought to. He never made any excuses for his team's early season difficulties, specifically the habit of losing to top-shelf programs by four or more touchdowns. The Eagles, it was widely reported, had chemistry problems.

As we are not normally tuned into Summit Conference politics, we can only speculate on what those chemistry problems were. Perhaps the point guard kept identifying Barium (BA on the Periodic Table of Elements) as Bromine (BR), or the shooting guard, asked to identify Lithium (LI) in his Chem 215 midterm, wrote "Linoleum." Somehow, I don't picture Kampe screaming at his fellas during a timeout, "Look, for the last time, neon does not exist as a diametric molecule in nature! Hydrogen does, Nitrogen does, Flourine does, but Neon? C'mon!"

But here's what Kampe told the Post-Gazette's Ray Fittipaldo the other day that ought to curdle some bad chemistry that NCAA coaches have now taken under full consideration:

"Listen, we're not going to win the NCAA tournament. We're not dumb enough to think we're going to cut the nets down. We just want to play our tails off, have fun and see how we stack up."

Fine, so let me ask this.

If Oakland, a 14th seed for these proceedings, is not going to win the NCAA tournament, and knows full well its not going to win the NCAA tournament, what is it doing in the NCAA tournament?

Nothing against the Golden Grizzlies or Golden Eagles or the Golden Lions or any of the other golden boys in this tournament, but please remember Kampe's candor the next time you hear the reasons that a 96-team tournament, in lieu of the current 64 tournament, makes perfect sense.

It's perfect nonsense.

Given a perfect storm of specific skills and outrageous providence, Oakland could beat Pitt tomorrow. Or some other 14th seed could win. Even a 15th seed can win. Once. A 16th seed, however, has never won a game in this tournament since it expanded to 64 teams in 1985.

Furthermore... wait ... oh, we now interrupt this column to provide you with the official Republican response to President Barack Obama's NCAA tournament bracket. Ladies and gentleman, Representative John. A. Boehner (R-Ohio).

"The president should blow up this bracket and start over. The bracket he's trying to ram down our throats here is too costly and it's not wanted by the American people. This Final Four of Kentucky, Kansas, Villanova, and Kansas State will only increase health care costs and cause greater job loss. Furthermore, this business about St. Mary's beating Richmond in the second round is an insult to spiders everywhere."

Thanks for that, Congressman.

So what was I saying?

Oh yeah, remember, no team seeded lower than 8th has won this tournament, which I would argue is persuasive evidence that the optimal number of tournament teams is 32, or exactly what it was in the mid '70s. There's a lot of love out there for 64 (65 if you count the opening-round game won Tuesday by the Golden Lions of Arkansas Pine-Bluff, losers of their first 11 games this year). But worse, there's a lot of love for 96 teams, and even 128.

If that makes any sense, why stop there?

Why not open it up completely to include all 347 Division I basketball teams? Is it because no one wants to call it March/April/May Madness? If you had all 347 teams in the tournament, shouldn't you allow two high school teams compete in an opening-round game. Who wouldn't want to watch Knoch vs. West Waco for the right to face Tennessee-Martin?

OK, me.

This everybody's-in format has applications across the board in sports. It's the one method that would put the Pirates in the playoffs, for example. That said, I wouldn't touch college football's current system, which is perfect -- a near-endless series of exhibition games, followed by an monthlong bowl season determined by a dubious computer formula, culminating in an alleged title game between two teams who have not played in six weeks.

Maybe that's why we like the basketball tournament so much.

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