A decision on future NCAA Tournament expansion for men’s and women’s basketball isn’t expected to happen before the end of this season, NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball Dan Gavitt told CBS Sports on Thursday. Beyond that, Gavitt told CBS Sports there remains a possibility that the tournament doesn’t expand at all, at least not in the “near-term.”
“The most important thing to get across,” Gavitt said on the Eye on College Basketball podcast, “this is definitely not a fait accompli. The recommendation to not expand the tournaments is absolutely a potential outcome here in the short-term.”
The reasons for potentially deferring a decision on expansion are tied to myriad cumbersome financial issues, in addition to differing opinions within the NCAA on the competitive viability of expanding both the men’s and women’s tournaments. Many in the NCAA are proud of the tradition, distinct marketability and symmetrical appeal of the March Madness bracket that’s been built out over the past 40 years, with a formula that is unmatched in American sports.
“The committees are continuing their ongoing analysis of whether or not to expand the championships, and if so, how to go about doing that,” Gavitt said.
CBS Sports reported in June of 2023 that a decision had been made to either keep the tournament at 68, or expand the field to 72 or 76 teams. The men’s and women’s committees have met multiple times on this topic since, with incremental advancement on a decision that has long been met with resistance by plenty of college basketball fans.
Gavitt also made a point Thursday to push back on media speculation in recent weeks and months that framed expansion in the near-future as all-but-official. While that remains a distinct possibility, Gavitt said there are major logistical challenges and unknown realities that await for the NCAA and its member schools. College sports leaders are bracing for the most progressive and volatile era in the institution’s 100-plus-year history: billions of dollars worth of revenue-sharing for college athletes for the rest of this decade and into the 2030s as a result of the impending House case settlement.
“It has felt like, in some cases over the last few months, there’s been more reporting around, ‘Well, this is a done deal, it’s going to happen,’ and I can assure you that’s not the case,” Gavitt said. “I couldn’t predict as I sit here today what the outcome is going to be.”
It’s possible the NCAA decides to hold off on a final verdict on this matter until 2026 or 2027. There is still ample time to wait and see. The current media deal with CBS Sports and Warner Bros. Discovery runs through April of 2032.
“I do think that there will be an opportunity to make a decision about ’26 sometime in the coming months, but if that decision is not to move forward with expansion, I don’t know that that is going to resolve the issue over the next five-to-eight years either,” Gavitt said. “Could be that the smartest thing to do is to wait and see whether or not the House settlement happens and is approved by the judge on April 7, what the ramifications of that going forward are, and whether this should be a topic that is considered a year or two from now, more so than it is right now.”
There is no mandated, specific deadline for the men’s and women’s basketball committees to determine whether or not to expand by 2026, but Gavitt said late April/early May is the window that needs to be met if any change were to come for 2026.
“Expansion, even in a modest level, is complex, more complex, I think, than has been recognized and reported, because it is expensive,” Gavitt said. “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.”
The more teams added to the tournament, the less money there is to share per school. And with revenue sharing the expected format for high-major athletic departments beginning later this year, schools can’t afford to give up a dime they otherwise would have had coming into their coffers. In absence of a major inflow of additional profits (new sponsorships surrounding both men’s and women’s March Madness), the proposition becomes much harder to sell. Gavitt called the financial challenges “a very real factor in this consideration” of whether or not to expand.
“It’s a significant factor because revenue is a significant consideration in almost anything in college athletics right now,” Gavitt said.
One commissioner with intimate knowledge of the expansion talks told CBS Sports recently: “Reducing the values of a unit is a nonnegotiable. Schools and all conferences have to remain whole.”
There are few people in the NCAA world as respected, liked and, frankly, powerful as Gavitt. His voice carries immense weight not only because of his proven track record of helping sustain the NCAA Tournament’s popularity for well over a decade, but because he genuinely loves college basketball and cares about the sport’s wellbeing in a way financial forecasts, corporate sponsorship deals and PowerPoint pitch decks can never measure. He’s the son of the late Dave Gavitt, who formed the Big East in 1979 and changed college basketball forever. Dan Gavitt has been at the NCAA for the past 13 years, but he’s spent his entire life in college basketball.
His father helped expand the field to its platonic ideal of 64 schools in 1985 after serving as the chair of the selection committee. Dan Gavitt was privately anti-expansion for a long time. On Thursday, he said his position has softened — but not necessarily flipped the other way.
“I haven’t formed a final opinion myself on that,” Gavitt said when I asked what he would do if given the power to decide on expansion. “My thinking has evolved over the last two or three years around this topic. I would say if you asked me that question two or three years ago, I’d been a simple and quick answer of ‘no.’ … I’m still not necessarily sold on whether or not it should expand, but I think there’s so much that has gone on and changed in just the last couple of years and I think we have to look at not just now, we have to look at the future, and what our current membership makeup looks like.”
College basketball remains far from perfect — among a handful of needed fixes, referee review protocols are plaguing many end-of-game situations and need addressing ASAP in the forthcoming offseason — but the sport overall finds itself in a rather healthy place in 2025. Its regular season packs a punch but is still searching for a bit more relevancy as it moves alongside the back half of the NFL and college football seasons.
An expanded tournament could further reduce the sport’s urgency from November through early March as a result. It also remains to be seen, if the tournament were to be expanded, how the Tuesday and Wednesday matchups would change. Would more double-digit seeds that got automatic bids play on those days? What does the access look like for teams from the power conferences vs. the access for the low- and mid-majors? The unintended consequences of messing with a near-perfect thing loom over these discussions.
“Those are all things I wrestle with and kind of keep me up at night,” Gavitt said, later adding, “We really need to be future-thinking about this and not just stuck in the past, where things are not going to be the same as they once were. And yet, keeping the tournament successful, keeping the tournament beloved as it is, keeping what makes it special, special, is also something that I will always protect with every ounce of my being.”
You can watch my entire interview with Gavitt below. Our chat on NCAA Tournament expansion begins at the 31-minute mark.
