March Madness Expansion to 72 or 76 Teams Floated; Change Could Come Soon
"The still viable outcomes include the tournaments remaining at 68 teams or expanding the fields to either 72 or 76 teams in advance of the 2026 or 2027 championships," Dan Gavitt, the NCAA senior vice president of basketball, said in a statement Thursday.
The idea of expanding the tournament picked up steam in the spring when NCAA President Charlie Baker said it could add value and that he'd like to see the issue resolved in the next few months.
He said the NCAA has had "good conversations" with TV partners CBS and Warner Bros., whose deal runs through 2032 at the cost of around $1.1 billion a year. Baker also mentioned the increasingly difficult logistics involved with adding teams to what is now known as the "First Four" — a series of four games played on Tuesday and Wednesday of the first week to place four teams into the 64-team bracket.
Though there has been no concrete plan for how expansion would work, speculation has centered on bringing more at-large teams, likely from major conferences, into the 64-team bracket. Such a move would come at the expense of champions of lower-level conferences.
Currently, two of the First Four games involve 16 seeds — teams that automatically qualify by winning lower-ranked conferences — while two more involve at-large teams often seeded 11 or 12. For instance, in 2021, UCLA made the Final Four as an 11 seed that also played in the First Four.
"I don't accept that that model just continues in the future," SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said at league meetings in May.
He used the example of North Carolina State advancing to the Final Four as an 11-seed in 2023 as how bubble teams from big conferences can make long runs in the tournament.
"You could go ask my colleagues in the [automatic qualifier] conferences what should happen, and I'm certain they want that split to continue for life," Sankey said. "But you've got some really, really good teams ... that I think should be moved into the tournament."
Any recommendation for expansion would have to be approved by the NCAA's Division I board, which next meets in August.
Reporting by The Associated Press.
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