March Madness could soon become even bigger, if Charlie Baker has his way.
Speaking Thursday during the Big 12 spring meetings, the NCAA president said he sees value in expanding the NCAA Tournament to potentially 76 teams with hopes of coming to a decision on the matter in the next few months.
“We’ve had good conversations with CBS and WBD (Warner Bros. Discover),” Baker said. “Our goal here is to try to sort of get to either yes or no sometime in the next few months because there’s a lot of logistical work that would be associated with doing this.
“If we were to go down this road, you just think about the opening weekends, who has to travel the longest, it gets complicated.”
The tournament field expanded from 65 teams to 68 in 2011, creating the First Four round that pits the two lowest-seeded at-large teams against one another as well as the two lowest-seeded conference champions for a chance to reach the traditional 64-team bracket.
Baker said he has discussed growing the field to 72 or even 76 teams.
As the NCAA president put it, the current format contains flaws, noting that even with 68 teams in the field, there are still some who believe their teams were snubbed.
“The point behind going from 68 to 72 or 76,” Baker said, “is to basically give some of those schools that were probably among the 72, 76, 68, 64 best teams in the country a way into the tournament.”
Kansas coach Bill Self said Big 12 coaches favor expansion. His conference featured seven tournament entrants in 2025, compared with 14 boasted by the SEC.
“There was a little bit that was brought forth and the consensus among the coaches, even though it was very little, would be in favor of that,” Self said. “I don’t know if you could make it where it was totally equitable all the way across the board for everybody. Certainly, there’s going to be outliers on every situation.”
–Field Level Media
Comments