NCAA president Charlie Baker says one of his top priorities is expanding March Madness.

"That would be the goal, to try and do this for next year." pic.twitter.com/qcpngLBUSw

— Front Office Sports (@FOS) May 29, 2025

NCAA president Charlie Baker said one of his top priorities here at the Big 12 spring meetings was to discuss expanding March Madness, which could come in 2026.

"That would be the goal, to try and do this for next year. ... We've been talking about 72 and 76."

— David Rumsey (@_DavidRumsey) May 29, 2025

Not sure I'm a fan. One idea I see in the comments that I liked was potentially auto bids then to both the regular season and conference tourney champs.

If they make it 72 or 76 like they're talking about I bet nobody would notice within like three years. The only way to ruin it would be to actually add a whole new round but nobody is talking about that.

If this doesn't turn into a 72 team Sun Belt Conference style tournament I'm going to be highly disappointed.

That is until these NIL players start sitting out games demanding more rest days!

bobinator said:

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If they make it 72 or 76 like they're talking about I bet nobody would notice within like three years. The only way to ruin it would be to actually add a whole new round but nobody is talking about that.

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How many play-in games are ignorable? All of them…

bobinator said:

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If they make it 72 or 76 like they're talking about I bet nobody would notice within like three years. The only way to ruin it would be to actually add a whole new round but nobody is talking about that.

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Haven't they already essentially added another round with all the play in games. Or are you considering that a part of the norm now? Guessing if they keep adding teams it would just basically expand the play in round, to your point, people wouldn't really notice.

Yeah, nobody is really going to notice the change outside of college basketball junkies after a few years unless it impacts what the top seeds are doing.

The part that I don't like is I'm positive they're just going to kick more 15/16 seeds to play-in games when it should be the last 12 or whatever at-large teams.

I think you could make a good business case that it already is and that financially everyone would be better off by expanding it to 128.

This is the dumbest idea I've seen in a very long time. Leave it to the NCAA to be the one who proposes it.

The NCAA is technically who is proposing it, but this is coming from people like Sankey and the SEC.

I'm curious if the networks have the demand for it to make the $$ work, as they'll only do this if their confident it results in more money. If they're putting the 15/16 seed games in there, I'm not sure the viewership numbers are going to lead to the extra win unit payouts making sense.

I would imagine the networks would prefer it be the last at-large teams because more often than not those are large schools that will draw more eyes.

bobinator said:

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Quote:

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I would imagine the networks would prefer it be the last at-large teams because more often than not those are large schools that will draw more eyes.

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This is exactly what should happen. Scrap the current first four format and call it the "Battle of the Bubble" or something and it's just random mediocre power conference teams fighting to get into the "real" tournament. I imagine it would do decent ratings.

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I could see that working if they left it to at-large big school battle of bubble type of games. They should leave the mid major teams alone; most of them are already battle tested and have earned their way to the tournament.

Pvilleaggie said:

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The 64-team March Madness bracket is one of God's most beautiful creations. Anyone who would attempt to desecrate this glorious invention should immediately be placed into prison.

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I agree. I loved the 64 team format a d don't like the play-in games

68 is annoying but I can live with it. 72 would be super annoying and 76 would just be obnoxious overkill

I imagine this will be a slow expansion of the "First Four" becoming First 8, 12, 16, etc. until it expands to a full added round.

Agree with others the "First" teams should be bubble teams and not 16 seeds.

The whole season should be a tournament, single elimination.

frenchtoast said:

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The whole season should be a tournament, single elimination.

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A la Sun Belt Conference Tournament.

bobinator said:

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Quote:

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I would imagine the networks would prefer it be the last at-large teams because more often than not those are large schools that will draw more eyes.

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This is exactly what should happen. Scrap the current first four format and call it the "Battle of the Bubble" or something and it's just random mediocre power conference teams fighting to get into the "real" tournament. I imagine it would do decent ratings.

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This is currently known as "The Crown" hosted by Fox. And these ratings were lower than Jace's FT %.

Except it's not like what I'm proposing at all. Nobody wants an extra tournament featuring a bunch of mediocre teams.

But what people MIGHT watch, is a series of play-in games to get into the real tournament.

If you want to get more extreme, bump up the small school conference tournaments by a week (many of them are already on that week) and kill the big conference tournaments in favor of a "play-in" weekend.

Using last year as an example, all conference tournaments must be concluded by March 9th. The committee then releases a list of the 31 conference champions, the 25 best "at large" teams, and the "Bubble 16."

The Bubble 16 then come together at one site starting on March 13-16, where they play in four pods, with the winners advancing into the real tournament which starts the next week.

I could go for that Bubble 16 pod deal. Although I'd still only watch if there was nothing else on or had a direct interest in one of the teams.

Mark Pope will have a big issue with conference tournaments concluded by March 9th as he's already on record wanting to extend the regular season to 40 games.

BuzzFan24 said:

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I could go for that Bubble 16 pod deal. Although I'd still only watch if there was nothing else on or had a direct interest in one of the teams.

Mark Pope will have a big issue with conference tournaments concluded by March 9th as he's already on record wanting to extend the regular season to 40 games.

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then nuke OOC games or cut them back, start conference play in December. Which the B1G already does.

you can still have those conference showdowns in January

Yeah I actually think it would be good for college basketball to go ahead and start some conference closer to the beginning of the year and then spread the non-con games throughout like baseball does.

There's a lot of potential there to juice some early season attendance for teams that struggle with it. Imagine if it became an annual thing where we played Texas at noon on the day we also play them in football at whichever school was also hosting the football game. If you've got 100,000+ people on campus tailgating I'm sure at least 10,000 of them would pop into the arena for that.

Midweek attendance sucks anyway so move some crappy games to later in this year in the midweek.

You'd need all of the major conferences to agree to this though because it would be a pretty radical shift in how everyone handles scheduling.

El Presidente said:

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This is the dumbest idea I've seen in a very long time. Leave it to the NCAA to be the one who proposes it.

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If you think this is the dumbest idea from the NCAA, then you haven't been paying attention very long. This seems relatively minor in regards to other stupid decisions they make.

bobinator said:

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Yeah I actually think it would be good for college basketball to go ahead and start some conference closer to the beginning of the year and then spread the non-con games throughout like baseball does.

There's a lot of potential there to juice some early season attendance for teams that struggle with it. Imagine if it became an annual thing where we played Texas at noon on the day we also play them in football at whichever school was also hosting the football game. If you've got 100,000+ people on campus tailgating I'm sure at least 10,000 of them would pop into the arena for that.

Midweek attendance sucks anyway so move some crappy games to later in this year in the midweek.

You'd need all of the major conferences to agree to this though because it would be a pretty radical shift in how everyone handles scheduling.

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that's create a tailgating nightmare or you'd have to tell the mbb ticket holders good luck finding parking

Everyone would just park where they park for football. I can't imagine there's a ton of basketball season ticket holders that wouldn't also be going to the football game.

Obviously there would be some logistics to work out but there's some potential there too. But that's just one idea off the top of my head. But we do need more marquee basketball games on home football weekends. That Ohio State crowd last year was pretty good.

Attendance isn't a concern with these talks, nor is how competitive the first round matchups are.

TV eyeballs and the revenue they genreate is the only concern.

Nobody is talking about attendance related to expanding the field. But that's why if they expand it, it needs to be the bubble teams. Thats the only way you're going to get eyeballs. Nobody is tuning in to see more 16 vs 16 play in games. But that's also why I think they need to move it to the weekend before. Nobody is watching daytime play in games on Tuesday and Wednesday, but maybe they would the weekend before.

Attendance comment was in regard to moving around non-conference and shifting games to "home football weekends" and the like. There's only so much you can do with a schedule when the majority of it is dictated by TV slots.

Additionally the 16vs16 added games or the like aren't just a bump in eyeballs for that game - its a trickle down on how the networks can advertise the games leading up to it. End of the day, more games = more dollars. There's little risk of garnering less eyeballs for the 12-5 games just because there's added 16 vs 16 games a few days prior. It's almost entirely profit.

Look at the Texas vs A&M game getting moved to Friday. That serves absolutely nobody except for the TV networks. We'd play that game on Monday morning at 8am if they dangled enough money.

Simply put, talking about what would be better for fan attendance or what would be better for the competitiveness of the tournament as a whole... really isn't a concern to the decision makers.

Yeah my thought is if you had games that matter earlier in the season, people would start watching college basketball earlier and you'd have better overall viewing numbers.

The way it currently is most teams have like four games that matter, at most, the first two months of the season. The attendance bump would just be a secondary benefit but it's something I think could get people into basketball earlier in the year.

Might not work, I just think college basketball needs to try some new stuff.

Money grab for the tv networks.

No team lover than an 8 seed has ever won the championship, which means 32 is plenty and anything more is made for tv.

This would make the nit basically worthless. There would not be any decent teams left to play in the nit.

Are they trying to get rid of the nit?

You could could easily make each regional 18 teams with 2 of the teams having to play into competition.
17 plays 18. Then winner plays 16 for the last slot in each regional.
Seems like a money grab, no play in team will ever bet the no 1 team in the region.