NCAA’s Men’s Basketball Tournament Recent Discussions

Based on recent discussions and reports, it seems that an expansion of the NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Tournament field is not likely to happen soon. The NCAA Division I Men’s Basketball Committee has been studying options and gathering feedback, but there is no indication that expansion is imminent.

According to Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president of basketball, the idea of expanding the tournament has not been seriously discussed since he joined the NCAA in 2013. Even when it was briefly considered in the past, there was little interest from basketball committees in entertaining the idea of expanding.

In February, a recommendation was submitted to the Division I board of directors by the NCAA Division I Transformation Committee, suggesting that team sports with over 200 institutions consider expanding their postseason fields to 25 percent of the teams that meet the criteria. However, it’s worth noting that the NCAA tournament currently includes 68 teams, which is about 19.3 percent of all men’s teams. To increase it to 25 percent, approximately 20 more teams would be added to the tournament field.

Despite some discussions about minor expansion to either 72 or 76 teams being theoretically plausible in the future, there is a strong belief among NCAA Tournament power brokers that significant expansion, defined as anything more than 80 teams, is not desired and won’t be happening. It seems that expansion is not a priority for the NCAA at this time.