The NCAA Basketball Tournament Could Be Expanded To 76 Teams

11/13/2024 03:34 PM

Each March, sports fans around the country gather to watch one of the biggest sporting events on the calendar.

The NCAA basketball tournament is one of the most enduring traditions in American sports, as teams from around the nation face off in a single elimination event with games taking place all day and all night.

Some have even considered the first two days of the tournament a national holiday, as fans skip out on school and work to watch basketball. 

Currently, 68 teams compete in "March Madness," but new comments from the NCAA's president suggest that the number could grow over the next few years.

During an appearance on "The Dan Patrick Show" Wednesday, NCAA president Charlie Baker was asked if the tournament could expand to 96 teams. 

Baker acknowledged that the event could grow in scope, but he was clear that any expansion would not be drastic.

"No we're not [moving to 96 teams]," Baker told Patrick.

"The most we'll ever go to is somewhere in the 70s. The calendar is very, very limited in how many games we can slam into that period of time."

The tournament has already extended to the first week of April with 68 teams, accounting for the play-in round all the way to the Final Four. Adding more teams means more games, and that also means more time the tournament would need to be played.

The College Football Playoff has expanded to 12 teams this season, and it will be a nearly month-long event instead of the two-week affair that it was in years' past.

Adding six or eight more teams would mean the tournament could likely adhere to a similar schedule to the one that it currently operates under.

Expansion could happen as early as the 2025-26 college basketball season, as conference commissioners were presented with models for expansion earlier this year according to Ross Dellenger of Yahoo! Sports.

One model involves additional at-large bids, which would alleviate the potential issue of removing automatic bids for teams that win tournaments in "mid-major" Division I conferences.

Another proposal sees an expansion of play-in games that could add another neutral location to join Dayton, Ohio, the current host site for the "First Four" round of the tournament.

We'll see how things turn out with the Tournament, but the ever-changing landscape of college sports shows that change could be here before we know it.

Related: Prayers Are Pouring In For Former Duke Basketball Star Kyle Singler