NAPLES, Fla. – College basketball moved one step closer this week to an expanded NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
NCAA officials on Wednesday presented Division I conference commissioners with at least two expanded field models, one with four additional teams and another with eight additional teams, commissioners told Yahoo Sports. Officials have declined to speak publicly about the models.
The models would expand the field from 68 teams to 72 or 76 teams, with additional at-large selections as well as at least one additional First Four spot. Any expansion would begin in the 2025-26 season at the earliest. If the men’s event expands, the women’s tournament will likely see a similar expansion.
Dan Gavitt, NCAA vice president for the men’s basketball championship, unveiled the models in a presentation Wednesday at the commissioners’ annual summer meeting. In the culmination of months of work, Gavitt outlined possibilities for what the commissioners believe will be an inevitable expansion of the men’s event – a move advocated mainly by power conferences, something Yahoo Sports reported in February.
As a way to avoid eliminating any of the 28 small conference automatic qualifiers — a time-honored concept popular with fans — the NCAA and conference leaders are eyeing the addition of at-large selections, as has been done in the past. The last expansion, in 2011, added four at-large teams and created the First Four in Dayton, Ohio, where two pairs of 16 seeds and two pairs of at-large selections meet in play-in games.
Any further expansion in the field is expected to result in at least one additional First Four location, perhaps in a Western time zone. But expanding the tournament – even just four teams – is a complex issue.
Officials are planning to maintain the current 64-team bracket. With the winners of the play-in games needing a place in this structure, space needs to be made. An additional 10-12 seeds, originally in the 64-team range, may have to win play-in games that Tuesday or Wednesday to advance to the first round on Thursday or Friday.
More difficult decisions are also to come. Officials need to determine whether more automatic qualifiers from small conferences will be relegated to play-in games — a sensitive issue for some commissioners in leagues with fewer resources.
There’s another thing too: will additional games generate more revenue? It remains an unanswered question. CBS and Turner are not required to increase the amount they pay, according to those familiar with the contract.
Gavitt’s modeling of a possible expanded field is one step in an approval process that could take many more months as commissioners explore altering what is widely known as the most popular event in college athletics — and in American sports. Several groups are scheduled to examine expansion modeling during this summer and fall, including NCAA basketball oversight committee meetings next week and an NCAA basketball selection committee meeting scheduled for next month.
The basketball tournament is the NCAA’s largest and most vital source of revenue, keeping the organization itself afloat and helping to subsidize hundreds of small university athletic departments. As part of a television tournament deal with CBS and Turner that runs through 2032, the NCAA annually distributes about $700 million to its schools, both in base amounts and in units earned by advancing in the event.
While much of that revenue goes to power conferences, leaders of the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12 have publicly expressed a desire to expand the field of 36 at-large selections to open a path for more of their schools. This spring, commissioners held several meetings with NCAA President Charlie Baker about expanding the tournament, strongly encouraging the NCAA to find a way to grow the field.
“I want to see the best teams competing for a national championship, no different from [the Big Ten and SEC] I want to see in football,” Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark told Yahoo Sports in February. “I’m not sure that’s currently happening.”
ACC commissioner Jim Phillips believes a “holistic review” of the tournament is needed, and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has suggested expanding the field several times over the past two years.
Expansion is nothing new for the event. In 1975, the tournament expanded to include 32 teams to allow a second team to represent a conference in addition to its champion. In 1979, it grew to 40 teams and then to 48 in 1980. In 1985, the tournament expanded to 64 teams, and in 2001, the tournament was expanded to a single team to create a play-in game before the 2011 expansion to 68 .
