Like It Or Not, the Tournament's Expanding

Does the NCAA Tournament need to be expanded?  Absolutely not.  Does anyone outside of a handful of people involved with the conferences want it to be?  No.  Is it going to be?  Almost certainly.  Because, as we've seen, when the Power 4 conferences want something, it doesn't matter if anybody else thinks it's a good idea.  They're going to get their way.

The question is really whether they'll expand to 72 or 76 teams.  Those are the logistics that they're currently working out.  Make no mistake, though, it's highly likely that we'll see at least four additional teams in the NCAA Tournament soon, if not in 2026 then in 2027.  It's not a question of if.  It's a question of when.

Of course, expanding the NCAA Tournament isn't as easy as these conference officials would like to believe.  Expanding the tournament means adding games.  Figuring out when to play those games is really the biggest challenge.  Because they don't want to mess with the symmetry of three weekends and the 64-team bracket.  Beyond that, though, they know that Thursday and Friday of the first round, with 16 games all day, are the two best days in sports and they really don't want to mess with that!

Which really only leaves them with one option.  Tuesday and Wednesday.  The First Four is currently two games each night.  Don't be surprised if that turns into four, with another site joining Dayton as a second First Four host.  Likewise, TNT's losing the NBA means they've got some programming hours to fill.  Extra NCAA Tournament games could certainly help fill that void.  So, doubleheaders on both truTV and TNT seems like the logical solution there.

With that in mind, going from 68 teams to 72 wouldn't be too disruptive.  It would be easy to add those four games while otherwise keeping the same schedule.  Dayton has earned its status as the permanent-ish First Four host, but you obviously can't play all eight games there--especially if it's also a first/second round site.  That second site could rotate, but would also need to be somewhat centrally located since the winning teams will immediately need to travel.

Going to 76 teams, meanwhile, adds eight games.  That would be 12 total across the first two days of the tournament.  That's six on both nights.  TV-wise, you could easily do a tripleheader on both TNT and truTV, but that would also mean you'd need to start those tripleheaders at like 5:00.  Whoever has to play in those 5:00 Tuesday games would have a ridiculously quick turnaround after the Selection Show on Sunday night.

One suggestion I've seen would be that, along with expanding the tournament, they could move the Selection Show to earlier on Sunday.  That seems unlikely, however, since they're playing conference championship games until about an hour before the Selection Show.  Could they make it like football and have all the conference championship games on Saturday?  Sure.  But I'm not sure the TV partners would be too keen on that idea.  CBS uses the Big Ten Championship Game as their Selection Show lead-in.  And, if there were no games on Sunday, they'd all (CBS, ESPN, etc.) have to adjust their schedules for earlier in the week, and some conferences probably wouldn't like having their championship game moved to a less favorable time (or, worse, opposite another conference's championship game).

There's also the question of the First Four format.  Ever since it was created in 2011, the First Four has featured two matchups between 16-seeds (the four lowest-ranked teams in the tournament) and two matchups between the last two at-large teams.  That was a compromise, and it obviously worked out.  We've seen both VCU and UCLA go from the First Four to the Final Four, leaving no doubt about whether they belonged in the tournament.

Those additional four teams would, obviously, be at-larges.  It stands to reason that they'd more than likely come from the power conferences (that's why they're pushing for expansion in the first place).  Those additional at-large teams will be better than some of the automatic qualifiers.  So, why should they have to play an extra game when lower-rated teams don't?  Or so the argument goes.

But, the counterargument is that those four teams wouldn't even be in the tournament if not for the NCAA increasing the size of the field.  If they're capable of going on a VCU or UCLA-type run, playing an extra game shouldn't be that big of a deal.  It's also important to note that the First Four games featuring the final at-large teams usually involve at least one power conference.  They're attractive matchups.  Far more attractive than the two 16-seeds playing each other.  So, from a broadcast perspective, it would be a tough sell.  You want to make these games people want to watch.

If the power conferences had their way, the tournament would be seeded 1-72 and the bottom 16 teams would play in those eight games for the 15 & 16 seeds.  That would pretty much guarantee that no power conference teams end up in the First Four.  However, it would also mean that 16 mid-major and low-major conference champions have to play an extra game (as opposed to the four it is currently).  Yes, eight of them would be guaranteed a win.  But it would also go against the entire point of exactly what everybody loves about the NCAA Tournament--the potential upset of watching those little guys go toe-to-toe with Duke and Kansas.

It seems like another compromise could be in order here.  The bottom eight teams overall play for the four 16-seeds.  That actually solves the problem of two 1-seeds facing a 16-seed that came out of the First Four and the other two not.  Then, the other four games are between the final eight at-large teams.  I'd even be OK with having it predetermined where they get the 11-seeds (meaning they're the 41st-48th ranked teams in the field).  That way, all of the 6-seeds are likewise on equal footing in having to prepare for two possible opponents.

While the power conferences would stand to benefit the most, you'd have to think four extra NCAA Tournament teams could, theoretically at least, help the mid-majors, as well.  They've been the ones getting short-changed the most with at-large bids recently, so it's more opportunities for those bubble teams.  Even if they get only one of those four additional spots.  (Going back to 2021, when the Tournament returned after the COVID cancellation in 2020, six teams from outside the Power 4 and Big East have been among the first four out and theoretically would've been in a larger field.)

Let's be honest, though.  That's not why the power conferences are pushing this.  It's because they want more NCAA Tournament bids for themselves.  More bids means more tournament shares, which means more money.  That's all anything in college sports is about these days.  Especially at the Power 4 level.  So, even though it's unnecessary and an unpopular idea, it also seems inevitable that the NCAA Tournament is expanding.  Perhaps as soon as this season.