Expansion of the men’s NCAA basketball tournament has never been more real.
Discussions are ongoing between the NCAA and its television broadcast partners — CBS and Warner Brothers Discovery — with the goal of expanding the tournament from 68 teams to 72 or 76 by next March, NCAA president Charlie Baker told Front Office Sports Thursday morning at Big 12 spring meetings in Orlando.
“We’ve had good conversations with CBS and WBD,” Baker said. “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.”
Baker noted that expansion beyond 76 teams is not on the table currently and that the goal of expansion is to get more teams into the tourney that are not automatic qualifiers, of which there are currently 34.
“If you have a tournament that’s got 68 teams in it, you’re going to have a bunch of teams that are probably among what most people would consider be the best 68 or 70 teams in the country that aren’t going to make the tournament — period — because you get a whole bunch of people who win their conference tournaments who aren’t in that group,” Baker told David Rumsey of Front Office Sports. “So, the point behind going from 68 to 72 or 76 is to basically give some of those schools that probably were among the best teams in the country a way into the tournament.”
The tournament field last expanded in 2011, going from 65 to 68 teams with the creation of the play-in games. How a further expanded field will look has yet to be definitively announced, but ESPN reported last summer that the 64-team bracket would remain with additional play-in games added involving the Nos. 10 through 12 seeds.
Additional play-in games will also create the need for another host city beyond Dayton, Ohio, per ESPN. “The Ohio city already has games on Tuesday and Wednesday and wouldn’t be able to host additional play-in games ahead of the tournament’s traditional Thursday first round.”
Tournament expansion is favored by many coaches in Power conference leagues, with the Big 12 men’s basketball coaches expressing their support for the move on Wednesday, through Kansas head coach Bill Self.
“There was a little bit that was brought forth,” Self told 247 Sports. “The consensus among the coaches was, even though it was very little, (we) would be in favor of it. Of course, I don’t know what the number would go to, but there’s discussions about that.”
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