NCAA Tournament expansion’s contentious future: How much March Madness is too much?

INDIANAPOLIS, INDIANA - APRIL 05: Drew Timme #2 of the Gonzaga Bulldogs and Flo Thamba #0 of the Baylor Bears compete for the opening tip-off in the National Championship game of the 2021 NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament at Lucas Oil Stadium on April 05, 2021 in Indianapolis, Indiana. (Photo by Andy Lyons/Getty Images)
By Nicole Auerbach and Mike Vorkunov
Feb 13, 2023

This March, 18.7 percent of Division I’s 363 men’s basketball teams will participate in the NCAA Tournament. At least one influential group of college athletics leaders is trying to raise that number in the years ahead.

The NCAA Division I Transformation Committee, after a year-long effort to modernize and decentralize collegiate sports, submitted its final official recommendations to the D-I Board of Directors last month. Most notably, the committee advised that all team sports sponsored by more than 200 institutions consider expanding their postseason fields to 25 percent of the teams that meet the standard in the sport — clearing the way for sports such as basketball to expand their postseasons, if desired.

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The proposal’s math for basketball isn’t difficult to do: Twenty-five percent of 363 D-I teams means a tournament of about 90. Final decisions on changes to the size of each sport’s bracket will need to be decided by January 2024 for implementation in the 2024-25 academic year.

Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president for basketball, told The Athletic that he expects the Men’s and Women’s Basketball Committees to take up the topic this spring and summer, after the conclusion of their respective tournaments. (Alternatively, the task may fall to the sports’ Oversight Committees.) Gavitt, who has been with the NCAA for a decade, said it would be the first time in his tenure that the committee gave serious weight to expansion.

“This is a different time because it’s coming as a recommendation from the Transformation Committee and the Division I Board,” he said. “So I’m sure the committees will give it the appropriate consideration and review, but it’ll be interesting to see what kind of appetite there is. It’s a national championship that’s really outstanding right now. You’d have to have very compelling reasons to consider changing what’s really, really outstanding.”

The social media reaction to the mere concept of expansion was, broadly, apoplectic; CBS Sports reported the next day that “there is a stern belief among many NCAA Tournament power brokers that significant expansion (say, anything north of 80 teams) isn’t desired and won’t be happening.”

Among other power brokers, there has been a more measured consideration of the possibility.

“The 10-minute read and immediate rejection of bracket expansion speaks to the lack of interest people have in actually considering what might be needed, what might be appropriate,” SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said. “(The transformation committee report) talks about membership growth and how there has to be an understanding that, as conferences have allowed more and more members into Division I, and people are adamant about honoring automatic bid commitments that date back 30 years, there are pressure points for us all.”

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Plenty of others in college sports scoff at the idea of the expanded SEC wanting more access to an event already easily accessed by Power 5 teams on the bubble. But so many programs and coaches are evaluated by their ability to reach and advance in the postseason; an expanded field allows more teams to define their season as successful.

Tournament expansion is not a new idea. Forty years ago, the tourney grew to 52 teams, from 48, and the field has gradually widened ever since, grabbing between 18.5 to 22.7 percent of Division I teams as the number of eligible schools has fluctuated. But the idea will be back on the docket in the next 12 months as administrators trade competing visions for the future of March Madness.

“Access is always a topic of discussion, and it’s a legitimate topic of discussion because the old adage is: You can play your way out of a bad seed, but you can’t play your way into the tournament if you don’t get selected,” said former Big 12 commissioner Bob Bowlsby.

Said VCU athletic director Ed McLaughlin, “I’ve never quite understood that basically half of FBS participates in bowl games, but the NCAA tournament — which is the best sporting event on Earth — doesn’t have the same high proportion of access.”


The last time the NCAA considered expanding the men’s tournament was in 2010. The idea was floated publicly by then-vice president Greg Shaheen and presented as a likelihood; the proposed format included a 96-team bracket with byes for the top 32 seeds. A few months later, it was dead in the water. One person with knowledge of the NCAA’s deliberations that year said the proposal never reached the level of university presidents.

The person, who was given anonymity to be able to speak freely, said that the NCAA ultimately felt like it was in a strong position and wanted to preserve the value of winning conference tournaments and the regular season. Another attempt to expand, that person said, would have similar consequences.

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“Why in the hell don’t you go to everybody participates?” the person said. “Why don’t you go to a winner-takes-all tournament? We can start that first of January. It’s ridiculous. All we’re doing here is grabbing money… It’s all about the money and nobody gives a s— about the athlete and the wear and tear on their bodies.”

How an expanded tournament is structured could ultimately determine how some schools and conferences feel about it.

Would a larger tournament include byes for higher seeds or throw low-seeded automatic qualifiers into an elimination bracket against one another? Would the inclusion of more Power 5 schools push mid-major automatic qualifiers further down the seed line? Could mid-majors be pushed to play-in games?

“If it becomes a situation where excellence is not rewarded and it’s just an increase in field numbers or automatic qualifiers and teams that had great seasons are removed, then you do risk losing a good bit of the nostalgia that made the NCAA Tournament special,” WAC commissioner Brian Thornton said. “Success should be rewarded, whether it be Saint Peter’s or Duke.”

These concerns come alongside worries that a larger tournament could further divide the haves and have-nots even before Selection Sunday, making it harder for would-be Cinderellas to get into the tournament even with more at-large spots. Mid-majors already feel crowded out during the scheduling process.

As the Power 5 conferences themselves have expanded, so have their conference schedules. That extended slate, alongside contracted inter-conference “challenge” events, leaves few high-profile nonconference games available for mid-majors to book. Power 5 programs can puff up their NET rankings with top-shelf games against similar schools and earn themselves more room for error in the process.

Indiana, a No. 12 seed in the 2022 tournament which finished with a 9-11 record in Big Ten play, had more than double the opportunities to strengthen its resume with Quad 1 games (15) as Dayton, the selection committee’s first team out of the field (the Flyers played seven Quad 1 games). The Hoosiers lost by 29 to Saint Mary’s in the first round.

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“The .500 teams in the Power 5 conferences are getting those (fringe at-large) bids right now,” McLaughlin said. He supports expansion not because those leagues will scoop up more bids, but because at least a few of the additional bids will go to schools like VCU.

Loyola Marymount athletic director Craig Pintens holds similar beliefs. He recently published a piece in support of a 96-team bracket, and he thinks tournament expansion is inevitable.

“People have such a love for the tournament, your natural reaction is going to be from a human perspective, psychologically: ‘Don’t change it. Don’t change anything, because I really like the way it is,’” Pintens said. “I just think that’s a shortsighted view.”

There is also no ignoring the dramatic increase in the money available for sports media rights over the past decade-plus, and the sway that money will hold. The NCAA last signed a new TV deal in 2010, in conjunction with the field expanding to 68 teams. That deal, initially worth $10.8 billion over 14 years, was extended in 2015 for another eight years and $8.8 billion.

“We undersold it a bit the last time around,” Bowlsby said.

No matter the format, the men’s basketball tournament rights deal will mean increased cash for the NCAA and its universities. A source with knowledge of the contract the NCAA signed with CBS and Turner Sports last decade said that the networks have the right of refusal to bid on any new tournament inventory if it expands. But the media landscape has changed so much since the NCAA signed its current deal that Turner Sports is now a part of Warner Bros. Discovery, which owns HBO Max, one of several significant streaming services looking to grab market share and stable footing.

Those streamers could alter how the next tournament is broadcast. Getting new subscribers for a streaming service is more important than ratings, said one longtime TV executive granted anonymity in order to speculate on future negotiations. He pointed to the NFL’s decision to sell its Thursday Night Football rights to Amazon.

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Early-round games, even in an 80- or 96-team field, could land on streaming platforms. That could offer a reason to put marquee schools into the tournament despite poor seasons, and tilt the field towards more high-major schools, with the big alumni bases who could turn into subscribers.

“There’s lots of things this expanded tournament has value for,” the TV executive said. “Because the real Cinderellas are going to be in there and you’re going to have all these big brands that didn’t have good years.”

There would, of course, be additional costs associated with a larger bracket: team travel, venues, operational costs, etc. And the NCAA would have to not only expand the men’s bracket but the women’s as well, and that’s a tournament that doesn’t bring in nearly the same amount of revenue. But they will need to provide equitable experiences for participating athletes in both events — a priority in the aftermath of the scathing report published in August 2021 by Kaplan Hecker & Fink LLP, the law firm hired to investigate gender equity issues in its championships after the NCAA failed to provide similar amenities to the teams in the 2021 men’s and women’s basketball tournaments. The NCAA has since adopted a number of recommendations from the Kaplan report, and last year the women’s tournament added a First Four round, just like the men’s, for the first time.

It’s worth noting that the NCAA has also already committed to spending more on the women’s basketball postseason, with the Division I Council approving an NIT-style secondary tournament for the sport back in October. That event will be owned and operated by the NCAA, just like it owns and operates the men’s 32-team NIT bracket. So, costs may not be drastically different if the NCAA were to sunset those events and essentially move their money toward two 96-team NCAA tournament brackets.

“If you add another 30 teams, and then you still have the NIT and you still have a CBI, then what have you really gained?” Bowlsby said. “We have too many opportunities in the postseason (now). If expanding the NCAA Tournament would make them go away, that might not be a bad idea.”

The women’s tournament should soon become its own revenue generator, too. The NCAA is expected to seek a standalone media rights deal for the women’s tournament, adopting a recommendation from the Kaplan report which said that those rights are currently devalued.

Changes to early rounds are unlikely to impact the tournament’s real profit engine. Multiple sources familiar with the media rights landscape said that the real money in the tournament TV deal comes from the Elite Eight onward.

Could the overall increase in revenue make up for what it all will cost? Would it be worth it? The numbers need to be crunched.


One of the most compelling arguments against tournament expansion is that the teams who finish on the wrong side of the bubble aren’t exactly world-beaters.

“Generally speaking, the system for identifying who gets in and who doesn’t is pretty well-refined and pretty good,” Bowlsby said. “I wouldn’t suggest to you that there are very many high-quality teams getting left out.

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“There is a legitimate argument about who’s really capable of entering the tournament and winning (it).”

That issue has been more pressing in other sports, which may be more eager to take the transformation committee’s guidance. The risk of excluding a deserving national champion from contention was one of the arguments for moving college football from the two-team BCS to the four-team College Football Playoff; fourth-seeded Ohio State won the very first CFP title. Ole Miss baseball won the national championship as the final at-large in the field last year.

College basketball has not had such a scenario. Just five double-digit seeds have made the Final Four over the last 20 years, and only six have since the tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. None have won a Final Four game.

That hasn’t stopped some, like Sankey, from pushing for a bigger field. The SEC had one of the loudest selection committee grievances last March, as Texas A&M joined Dayton among the first four out. But although the Aggies finished the season on a tear, they did lose eight consecutive games in January and February.

“We have to protect the competitive dynamic in the big picture, whether that’s Dayton or Texas A&M or Virginia Commonwealth, whoever that may be,” Sankey said.”Whether it’s men’s tennis or softball or men’s basketball, we have to be thoughtful as we look at these structures. The pressures are growing. We’ll have to continue to adapt. There is no element right now in college athletics that shouldn’t be subject to review — including postseason opportunities.”


This debate hangs over the main money-maker propping up college sports as we know it, at a moment when the future of the college sports enterprise has never felt so uncertain. If tournament expansion brings changes to the NCAA’s revenue distribution system, it could have large consequences for small and mid-major conferences that depend on the payouts from appearances and wins in March.

And it will come down to the administrators who run college basketball to make the right call.

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“The basketball committees are, clearly in my mind, the best and, frankly, the only groups that understand enough about the way the basketball championships work, why they’re successful and the value that they provide to the teams and the memberships,” Gavitt said. “When you serve on the committees and you understand how the championship is run, managed, how it works with host institutions and broadcast partners, you have a much deeper appreciation for the intricacy of it, the delicateness of it, frankly, and the complexity of it all.”

As leaders weigh what changes, if any, must be made in the coming months, they also have to weigh how that would impact college basketball on the whole. The NCAA Tournament remains a unifying force across the sport, and an entry point for many fans. Ignorance, most agree, won’t serve the sport well.

“Putting our heads in the sand and saying, ‘It’s not broke, don’t fix it,’ has really not done well for college athletics,” McLaughlin said.

(Photo: Andy Lyons / Getty Images)

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