Despite plenty of hand-wringing from college basketball purists, expanding the NCAA tournament isn’t the terrible idea many have suggested. In fact, yours truly has favored modest expansion for quite some time, especially and essentially if it keeps high majors from going their own way.
There hasn’t been serious expansion for 40 years (when the tournament jumped from 32 to 64), and Division I basketball has grown substantially in that time. With everyone hunting for even more revenue, both internal and external pressures are pushing the highest majors toward something no one wants: separate tournaments of haves and have-nots.
Instead, the NCAA looks likely to approve an expansion to 72 or 76 teams, possibly as soon as this week. The NCAA is loath to adjust its 64-team bracket and carefully-thought-out calendar, which means up to two dozen teams could be duking it out in earlier rounds as soon as next season. So let’s look at the practical implications of a bigger field — primarily for the new bracket — as well as what the unintended consequences could be.
Because there are always unintended consequences. Think back to the introduction of the First Four to the men’s tournament in 2011 (the women’s tournament would incorporate it in 2022). We wrote then that the first 16 vs. 1 upset was “virtually guaranteed by the new format,” as adding a pair of what previously were 15-seeds to the expanded No. 16 line would “stiffen the competition” for the 1-seeds. “The 15s had already proved they could beat 2-seeds,” we wrote, and in the 14 years since, UMBC and Fairleigh Dickinson have proved us right.
We can’t be quite as clairvoyant with this latest expansion, as there are still more questions than answers in terms of bracket composition, where (and for whom) the necessary byes will fall and, perhaps most critically, changes to the tournament’s timing and geography. Let’s tackle each of those questions.
Who could get the extra bids?
Perhaps the biggest question is the simplest: Who else will go dancing? Let’s assume there are no changes to the number of automatic qualifiers (AQs) or the fundamentals of team selection and seeding.
If we were to look at last year’s 68-team field and our Selection Sunday “bubble,” expanding to 72 would have immediately added West Virginia, Indiana, Boise State and Ohio State. Our next four out, if needed to reach 76 teams, were Dayton Flyers, Wake Forest Demon Deacons, UC Irvine Anteaters and SMU Mustangs.
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It’s a one-time sample, but still reassuring to see three of the eight bonus bids hail from outside the traditional power conferences. It says here that that is a very desirable outcome. Quality mid-majors have been getting the squeeze for years, so new opportunities at that level of the game are welcome.
Going back to the pandemic and looking at the highest-ranked (by NET) unselected teams adds even more perspective. This 40-team sample of possible additions in an expanded tournament breaks down as follows:
From my seat, this is still too lopsided. But it’s a start.
How will the bracket be built?
This is the hardest question to answer. Currently, 60 of 68 teams receive what amounts to a “bye” into the main bracket of 64. With a 76-team field, only 52 would receive such a bye.
Some would argue for the bottom 24 AQs to play their way into the eventual field of 64. More would argue for only at-large selections, in this case 24 out of 45 non-AQs, to do so. The most likely outcome, based on the tournament’s history, is another compromise. And the best path to that without making a complete mess of the bracket is to designate three full seed lines as opening-round pairings.
For the sake of argument, let’s use seed lines 10, 11 and 12 — which have, more often than not, seen themselves in the First Four. These are typically a mix of stronger AQs and the final at-large teams. Doubling the number of bids on each of those lines gets us to 76 teams. Put them in Tuesday-Wednesday tripleheaders and we’d have a truly attractive TV product (better than, say, Alabama State vs. St. Francis (PA)).
Using the 2025 tournament as an example, adding the next eight bubble teams (indicated by an asterisk below) to the bracket would have produced something like this for an opening round:
The final tally here is four AQs, four pre-expansion at-larges and the eight new at-larges (teams 69-76). There’s also a near-even split between power conferences and not.
Realistically, which seeds could the new teams get?
The First Four was quite intentional in designating the bottom four teams from both the AQ group and the at-large pool. The resulting Dayton doubleheaders have thus featured a pair of 16 vs. 16 matchups along with, typically, 11 vs. 11 seeds. The First Four also “split the baby,” if you will, in terms of relegating an equal number of low majors and higher majors to the opening round.
With expansion, especially if to 76, that tidy compromise goes out the window. Instead of eight teams playing four opening-round games, a 76-team bracket requires 24 teams — a massive increase — playing 12 opening-round games. In other words, almost a third of the field will need to squeeze in an extra contest shortly after Selection Sunday to keep the existing tournament calendar intact.
The cleanest means to that end is to play Tuesday and Wednesday tripleheaders. It won’t be an easy turnaround for the Tuesday teams, but only half of the 24 opening-round participants will be in that situation. (The number of teams and games required for a 72-team field drops to 16 and eight, respectively, with eight games on Tuesday and Wednesday over two sites.)
When could these teams play?
The only thing the NCAA wants more than a perfect 64-team bracket after the opening round is a tournament that doesn’t require a change in its calendar. The men’s championship has a perfect cadence on CBS/Turner, coordinating the Final Four a week before the Masters and backing Selection Sunday into that window.
Conceivably, an expanded opening round could be moved back a day or two — as it was for the 2021 COVID tourney — and extend the round of 32 into Monday or Tuesday of the following week. But that would disrupt the traditional Thursday and Friday of the first round, arguably the most popular element of the existing format.
The only change I foresee in the long run is the elimination of all conference championship games on Selection Sunday, resulting in a Selection Show that airs earlier in the day. This would give additional travel and prep time to the 24 opening-round participants.
Where could the new teams play?
Dayton has its First Four hosting privileges through the 2028 tournament. One option is to move the remaining extra games to a preexisting first/second-round site. More likely, in order to create a legitimate tournament atmosphere as well as needed bracket flexibility, the solution is to identify a companion opening-round site and replicate the Dayton model outside the Eastern time zone.
Geography should be the primary consideration here. Until we come up with a configuration that keeps the one dozen opening-round winners from immediately needing to head for the airport, that travel should be minimized.
I would select the non-Dayton site based on the sub-regional locations in each year’s tournament. This coming season, not that anyone asked, my vote would be for Kansas City.
Looking at the overall product, I don’t love the cumbersome opening round required by 76 (or even 72) teams. I still believe the best tournament would feature the original 64-team field with some kind of minimum eligibility requirement for middling high majors. But, at this point, factors beyond basketball are pointing toward expansion being inevitable.
Are these perfect solutions? No.
But a fractured sport without the NCAA tournament as we know it would be far worse.
