I feel confident something like this is going to happen.
College basketball moved one step closer this week to an expanded NCAA men’s basketball tournament.
NCAA officials on Wednesday presented to Division I conference commissioners at least two models of an expanded field, one with an additional four teams and another with an additional eight teams, commissioners told Yahoo Sports. Officials declined to speak publicly about the models.
The models would expand the 68-team field to 72 or 76 teams, with additional at-large selections as well as at least one additional First Four site. Any expansion would begin, at earliest, in the 2025-26 season. If the men’s event expands, the women’s tournament is likely to undergo 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 commissioners believe to be an inevitable expansion of the men’s event — a movement mostly championed by the 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 and popular concept with fans — NCAA and conference leaders are targeting 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 pairings of 16 seeds and two pairings of at-large selections meet in play-in games.
Any new expansion to the field is expected to result in at least one additional First Four site, perhaps in a Western time zone. But expanding the tournament — by even just four teams — is a complex issue.
Officials are planning to retain the current 64-team bracket. With play-in game winners needing a spot in that structure, space has to be made. More 10-12 seeds, originally in the 64-team bracket, could find themselves having to win play-in games on that Tuesday or Wednesday to advance to the first round on Thursday or Friday.
More tough decisions lie ahead as well. Officials need to determine if more small-conference automatic qualifiers will be relegated to play-in games — a sensitive subject for some commissioners of lower-resourced leagues.
Some version of this came up last year. I’m fine with the idea of a larger tournament – there’s something like 350 teams, there’s plenty of room for more of them in the premier event – but I’m far less excited about doing it for the purpose of allowing a bunch of 17- or 18-win big conference teams in. That’s boring, in addition to making the rich that much richer. Let more schools from the smaller conferences in. Plenty of schools from outside the Power Five Four could hold their own, and we the viewing public love it when they do. The big boys will still dominate the Sweet Sixteen and the Final Four. We know how the world works, though, so don’t get your hopes up too high. And be ready to fill out a larger bracket in a year or two.