NAPLES, Fla. — College basketball moved one step closer to an expanded NCAA men’s basketball tournament this week.
NCAA officials presented at least two models of expanded fields to Division I conference commissioners Wednesday. One has an additional four teams and the other has an additional eight teams, the commissioner told Yahoo Sports. Officials declined to speak publicly about the model.
This model expands the 68-team field to 72 or 76 teams and adds additional selections and at least one First Four site. Any expansion is scheduled to begin as early as the 2025-26 season. If the men’s competition expands, the women’s competition is likely to expand to a similar scale.
Dan Gavitt, NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship Vice President, unveiled the model in a presentation Wednesday at the committee’s annual summer meeting. After months of work, Gavitt outlined the possibilities that commissioners see as an inevitable expansion of the men’s sport. It’s a movement largely championed by power conferences and something Yahoo Sports reported on in February.
By not eliminating any of the 28 small conference automatic qualifiers, a traditional and popular concept with fans, the NCAA and conference leaders are aiming to add at-large selections as they have in the past. The last expansion in 2011 added four larger teams and created the First Four in Dayton, Ohio. Here, two pairs of 16 seeds and two pairs of at-large selections meet in a play-in game.
New expansions in this area are expected to add one or more First Four sites, possibly in the Western Time Zone. But expanding the tournament to just four teams is a complicated matter.
Officials plan to keep the current 64-team bracket. Play-in game winners need a spot in that structure, so make sure to make room for them. More of the 10-12 seeds in the original 64-team bracket may need to win a play-in game on Tuesday or Wednesday to advance to the first round on Thursday or Friday.
More difficult decisions lie ahead. Officials must decide whether more small conference automatic qualifiers will be relegated to play-in games. This is a sensitive topic for some members of the under-resourced league.
There is also another problem. Could additional games generate more revenue? It still remains an unanswered question. CBS and Turner will not be required to increase their payments, according to people with knowledge of the agreement.
Gavitt’s modeling of possible expansion areas is one step in an approval process that could take many more months as commissioners seek changes to college athletics and what is widely seen as the most popular event in American sports. Expanded modeling will be reviewed throughout the summer and fall, including at the NCAA Basketball Oversight Committee meeting next week and the NCAA Basketball Selection Committee meeting next month.
Basketball tournaments are the NCAA’s largest and most important source of revenue, sustaining the organization itself and subsidizing hundreds of small college athletic departments. As part of its tournament television deal with CBS and Turner, which runs through 2032, the NCAA distributes about $700 million annually to schools, both in base money and in units earned through advancing to the event.
Most of that revenue goes to power conferences, but leaders of the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12 have publicly expressed a desire to expand the 36 at-large selection fields to open the way for more schools. This spring, commissioners held several meetings with NCAA President Charlie Baker about tournament expansion and strongly encouraged the NCAA to find ways to grow the area.
“I want to see the best teams competing for a national championship, not unlike what (the Big Ten and SEC) want to see in football,” Big 12 Commissioner Brett Yormark told Yahoo Sports in February. said. “I’m not sure that’s happening right now.”
ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips believes a “comprehensive review” of the tournament is needed, and SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey has proposed expanding the field several times over the past two years.
Expansions are nothing new to events. In 1975, the tournament was expanded to 32 teams, allowing a second team to represent the conference in addition to the champion. It grew to 40 teams in 1979, and to 48 teams in 1980. In 1985, the tournament moved to 64 teams, in 2001 the tournament expanded to single teams to create play-in games, and in 2011 it expanded to 68 teams.
