Here’s what a 76-team March Madness field looks like — and why it should worry you

If this most recent NCAA Tournament had featured 76 teams, we’d have seen the first instance of a team one game over .500, Auburn, making the cut.

And if that isn’t juicy enough, the Tigers would’ve potentially played at … say, 3 p.m. on a Tuesday. Less than 48 hours after the bracket release.

Excited about the NCAA Tournament expanding to 76 teams, yet?

After the news Tuesday night that long-discussed tournament expansion is finally coming to fruition, as early as next season, the discourse quickly skipped ahead. Which teams, historically speaking, would’ve benefitted most from a bigger bubble? And there are some fun ones recently, perhaps none more so than Indiana State in 2024.

However, looking at the cutline for this postseason — which, by comparison, was one of the weakest in recent memory — paints a picture of the larger mediocrity that can (and will) be included in future fields.

Most of that, as you’d expect, comes from the high-major level. While San Diego State was included in the committee’s ‘First Four Out’ this March, the other three teams — Oklahoma, Auburn and Indiana — were all middling afterthoughts in their respective leagues.

Take the Sooners, arguably the best of the bunch, who lost nine straight games in January and February, finishing 7-11 in the SEC. Or Auburn, which, on top of finishing only one game over .500, lost nine of its last 12 contests. Indiana’s maybe the least defensible of them all, losing six of its last seven games to fall completely out of the 68-team field.

And that’s just the ‘First Four Out,’ teams that had reasonable arguments for inclusion. There are several ways to project the final four teams who would’ve made it this March, but they all require you to hold your nose first. If you go by Wins Above Bubble (WAB) — a new metric the committee introduced in 2025 — from Selection Sunday, Seton Hall, New Mexico, Belmont and Oklahoma State would’ve made the cut.

Or you can go by NET rankings, which — after eliminating any teams with losing records (Baylor, cough, cough) — leave you with New Mexico, Cincinnati, Tulsa and Seton Hall. Either way, not very appetizing.

Using the latter method, you’d have been looking at the following slate for Tuesday and Wednesday:

One of the key arguments in favor of tournament expansion was improved “access” for teams to participate in the postseason, especially as Division-I men’s college basketball has swollen to 365 teams. A 76-team field means that just over 20 percent of D-I teams will participate in March Madness, which sounds good on the surface … until you re-examine the lists of teams below the prior cutline.

There’s one legitimate “mid-major,” whether you go by WAB (Belmont) or the NET (Tulsa) — and seven teams operating on a wholly different financial playing field.

Maybe a few true mid-majors — like the 26-win Belmont team this season, which was upset in the Missouri Valley tournament — will squeeze through an expanded bubble. If so, an optimist could argue that giving lower-level leagues more chances to win games (and earn the accompanying NCAA Tournament financial units) is actually a good thing. And that would be.

But all the data suggests the opposite will transpire. That most of the eight new berths awarded each March will instead go to high-major teams like Indiana, which simply didn’t win enough to get in by 15-year-long standards.

Building on the aforementioned Auburn example: How long until a high-major with a losing record gets in, then, saved by some sterling metrics?

This season’s bubble — fully accounting for the impact of modern trends, such as the transfer portal, NIL and revenue-sharing — could not have made a stronger case against NCAA Tournament expansion. Yet here we are, with our final 68-team bracket almost certainly in the rearview mirror.

Fans, inevitably, will still tune in for an expanded (yet watered-down) first round. But it’s very much to be determined what level of college basketball they’ll actually be watching.