Yes, it’s rare that SportsMyriad will delve into sports that already covered ad absurdium elsewhere, but being a fan of international sports tends to give you a perverse interest in how to organize leagues and tournaments. Should MLS be a single table? How much tradition would the Premier League wreck with a 37th game overseas? Is the Page playoff system the greatest playoff innovation ever? (Answers: Yes, a lot, and absolutely.)

So with the NCAA pushing a 96-team basketball tournament to national consternation, it’s hard to ignore the controversy without putting in a totally different idea.

And here it is …

Keep the tournament proper at 64 teams. Have play-in games that vary in number each year. The reason that number will vary: The play-in games will be for regular-season conference champions who didn’t win their conference tournaments and didn’t earn at -large bids.

This year, we had six such teams — Stony Brook (America East), Jacksonville (Atlantic Sun, which had a four-way tie), Weber State (Big Sky), Coastal Carolina (Big South), Kent State (MAC), Jackson State (SWAC). That would give the tournament three play-in games for a total of 67 teams.

The advantages are:

1. The regular season would mean something in every conference. As it stands now, in a lot of leagues, the conference games are meaningless. Any team in a weak conference has to make a big statement in non-conference games early in the season to have a shot at an at-large bid. When that doesn’t happen, the conference record means squat. Make the regular season a race for an NCAA bid, and it’s a bit more interesting.

2. The conference tournament would still be meaningful. Notice that no conference champion would play in the play-in games. So a regular-season champion still has incentive in the conference tournament.

Expanding to 96, mostly through at-large bids for the major conferences, accomplishes none of this.

And the NIT, now joined by the CBI and CIT, can be interesting. A North Carolina-Dayton NIT final is much better than a dreary matchup of ninth-place major conference teams for the right to be whacked in the “second round” by a top seed. The three non-NCAA tournaments do what football bowl games are supposed to do — create good matchups and a nice postseason treat for many schools.

Next week: How to fix the Champions League. What? That’s not broken?