NCAA Tournament expansion may still be on the horizon, but the chances it occurs in time for the upcoming season are dwindling. NCAA president Charlie Baker said Thursday that a decision on whether or not to expand the field to 72 or 76 teams could come “sometime this fall” — this, after previously setting August as an informal deadline to implement a larger bracket for the 2026 postseason.
The Division I men’s and women’s basketball committees met earlier this month to discuss potential expansion but did not reach a conclusion on the matter. And the new timeline for a decision makes it logistically challenging to reshape the tournament by next March, Baker said at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C.
“The tournament has to start after the conference championships are over,” Baker said, per ESPN “And right now Selection Sunday happens like two hours after the last tournament game ends and has to finish by the Tuesday before the Masters. There’s not a lot of room there. Any expansion, we’re going to have to figure out how to put it in and then logistically how to make it work.”
The indecision from tournament stakeholders this month is a small victory for the general college basketball public, whose collective sentiment opposes field expansion. It may just delay the inevitable, though. NCAA figureheads and conference administrators have been outspoken about the benefits of adding more teams to the postseason mix.
Expansion has been on the table for years, but this is the closest the NCAA has come to building a larger men’s bracket since it last did so in 2011. It was with that tournament that the First Four made its debut. The women’s tournament moved to 68 teams in 2022.
Another potential roadblock is the financial impact expansion will have on qualifying teams. Conference payouts and the per-schools takeaways could shrink as more teams require more slices of the proverbial pie.
“Expansion, even in a modest level, is complex, more complex, I think, than has been recognized and reported, because it is expensive,” NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt told CBS Sports in February. “It’s expensive because of additional team travel, per diem, game operations, but also the basketball performance funds, the units that are earned throughout the men’s and women’s basketball championships.”
It remains to be determined how the bracket would take shape in an expanded model. The restructuring of the First Four to include more teams prior to the First Round is a logical path forward, but it could depend on whether the field grows to 72 teams or to 76.
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