How much is too much? We’ll find out after NCAA president Charlie Baker stated a desire to expand the men’s NCAA Basketball Tournament from 68 teams to a size of 72 or even 76.
“We’ve had good conversations with CBS and WBD,” Baker said Thursday at the Big 12 spring meetings. “Our goal here is to try to either get to yes or no sometime in the next few months, because there’s a lot of logistical work that would be associated with doing this, if we were to go down this road.
“That would be the goal — to try and do this for next year, which is why the window to actually negotiate it will probably end sometime early summer.
“We’ve been talking about 72 and 76,” Baker added. “Those have been the numbers the basketball committee’s talked about. It would obviously be one or the other, won’t be more.”
Frontofficesports.com’s David Rumsey added more to the conversation.
“Thursday afternoon, media executives told FOS that the additional games were not worth much,” Ramsey wrote. “One executive who declined to be named was very straightforward: ‘I believe CBS and TNT will offer them zero — or a minus amount. They’re expanding the earliest round for no apparent reason other than the powers that be think it’s worth more.'”
So, let’s say the tournament does expand. That would have to mean a shoo-in for most blue blood programs as long as they don’t have a bad season, as would be made evident through North Carolina’s inclusion in the 2025 NCAA Tournament, a tournament of only 68 teams. UCLA is a blue blood. Just saying.
Would expanding the tournament mean the SEC gets in completely?
In the 2025 NCAA Tournament, the SEC had 14 programs in their 16-team conference make the tournament.
Eight teams in the SEC had a winning conference record; they deserve to be in. Six of them did not. Five of those teams lost their opening matchups.
Is this in response to North Carolina’s inclusion despite better resumes from Indiana and West Virginia, two other blue blood schools (Mountaineers to an extent)?
Regardless, it seems no matter what happens, no one will be satisfied, as there is always a team on the bubble.
Ensure you follow on X (Twitter) @UCLAInsideronSI and @tcav30 and never miss another breaking news story again.
Please let us know your thoughts when you like our Facebook page WHEN YOU CLICK RIGHT HERE.
This post was originally published on this site be sure to check out more of their content.
