Expanding NCAA Tournament field to 76 games invites mediocrity to the Big Dance and ruins the bracket

Expanding NCAA Tournament field to 76 games invites mediocrity to the Big Dance and ruins the bracket originally appeared on The Sporting News. Add The Sporting News as a Preferred Source by clicking here.

They have the ball inside the 5 now, and only the fiercest of defensive stands from the opposition is going to stop advocates of the 76-team March Madness from reaching their ultimate goal.

And no, mixing the metaphor here is not done by accident.

It’s to show how obtuse NCAA Tournament expansion proponents have been throughout their campaign to damage one of America’s greatest events and diminish the popularity of the sport whose championship it decides.

It may be hard to believe now, but there was a period within my time following the sport passionately there wasn’t a bracket pool in every office, when millions weren’t watching for that 12/5 upset, when it actually was impossible to see the majority of March Madness games on television. If you were a Notre Dame fan living in the Pittsburgh suburbs wanting to see John Shumate taking on Michigan and Campy Russell in the 1974 Sweet 16? Forget it. No chance.

The Bracket changed everything.

The Bracket is why each NCAA Tournament now is worth $1.1 billion just in television cash, before anyone sells a ticket or corporate sponsorship or hospitality package. The Bracket is why every game is on TV, and why those games comprising the core of the event – starting on Thursday at noon, ending on the first Monday in April before midnight – draw about 10 million viewers on average. The Bracket is why Charles Barkley arrives on the college scene every March.

The impending expansion of the field to 76 teams has lit The Bracket on fire and tossed it into a trash can.

The NCAA Tournament expansion to 64 teams in 1985 helped transform the first few weekends of the tournament into nearly as grand an occasion as the last. There was a simplicity to The Bracket even non-fans could embrace.

The impending expansion to 76 teams was a lousy enough idea. The execution of that concept as reported by Matt Norlander of CBS Sports, is so needlessly complicated as to turn bracket pools into a players-only event. They’ve taken the worst idea possible and somehow made it even crummier than we could have imagined.

If you’re not a serious gambler, why would you bother with the eight games tacked onto the previous First Four? (Don’t anybody call the new occasion the Dirty Dozen!) Six games on Tuesday and six on Wednesday? It could have been executed with an extra four games, but since no one involved in the design of this atrocity seems to recognize how March Madness came to be what it is, we shouldn’t have expected elegance.

There still are some formalities left to complete before the expanded March Madness becomes a reality for 2027. For starters, this decision requires the approval of the NCAA men’s basketball committee. It seems unlikely its members will flex the requisite muscle to stop this, but then, what chance did the New England Patriots have when the Seattle Seahawks arrived on their 1-yard-line with a second-and-goal to win Super Bowl 49?

Perhaps the committee will give this dreadful idea the dismissal it deserves if they read through the list of teams that would have made it – and their lack of qualifications – had this format been in place in 2026. Let's call them the not-so-great eight.

MORE: NCAA Tournament expansion is in final steps for 2027

Logo for the 2027 NCAA Men’s Final Four

David Rodriguez Muñoz / USA TODAY NETWORK via Imagn Images

Oklahoma

Record: 19-15

Wins Above Bubble rank: 50

Quad 1 record: 4-10

Quads 1&2 record: 10-15

The Sooners had 25 chances in a 34-game regular season to play the type of games that typically are involved in the NCAA Tournament – those that fall into the Quad 1 and Quad 2 designation – and their winning percentage in those games was .400. Yep, they lost 60 percent of the time.

The Sooners were 5-12 against the NCAA at-large field (all those that would be selected even if they failed to earn automatic qualification). That’s a .294 winning percentage.

And if you pick just the littlest bit deeper into Oklahoma’s record, it’s almost appalling. Their list of regular-season victories included just eight against teams that finished above .500, and three cleared that hurdle by two or fewer games. The composite record of their victims was 288-361.

And this was the first team the committee left out of the field!

Auburn

Record: 17-16

WAB rank: 44

Quad 1 record: 4-13

Quads 1&2 record: 7-15

With former coach Bruce Pearl still in charge, Auburn recklessly chose to take on one of the most difficult schedules in Division I basketball – ranked fourth most challenging by the NET ratings – with a team that had lost seven of the top eight players from the 2025 Final Four squad’s rotation.

(Pearl then left to do TV work while his son, Steven, coached the team).

Auburn lost to some of the nation’s best teams on the way to Southeastern Conference play: Michigan (national champ), Arizona (Final Four), Purdue (Elite Eight), Houston (Sweet 16) – the words “lost to” being a very important part of that sentence. Auburn was 7-13 against teams that made the field and also lost three times to non-field teams.

In 1991, Villanova reached the NCAA Tournament with a 16-14 record after playing a solid schedule in an extremely deep Big East and defeating seven high-major teams that made the field. Ten years later, Georgia made it with the same record and six wins against NCAA-bound teams. Throughout the 40-plus years of The Bracket, that standard of two games above .500 had stood as an informal minimum requirement to make the field.

In a 76-team world, these Tigers would have been in, easy. Which raises the ugly question: Wouldn’t a .500 team have a chance, as well?

San Diego State

Record: 20-10

WAB rank: 48

Quad 1 record: 3-8

Quads 1&2 record: 9-10

One sees the name “San Diego State” and assumes a certain degree of quality. That’s reasonable in most years, given what Steve Fisher built with the Aztecs and Brian Dutcher has continued into this decade, including a national championship game appearance in 2023.

This Aztecs team was not one of those Aztecs teams. They lost six times to opponents that failed to reach the NCAA field and only earned one victory against an opponent that made it, an 89-72 home win against Mountain West champion Utah State.

Indiana

Record: 18-14

WAB rank: 49

Quad 1 record: 3-10

Quads 1&2 record: 6-14

The Hoosiers had so little interest in continuing their season following an opening-game upset loss to Northwestern in the Big Ten Tournament, they announced their decision not to compete in the postseason almost immediately after the NCAA bracket was released.

Right up until the Sunday before the Big Ten Tournament commenced, their resume reflected a team that was alive for March Madness inclusion if they were able to win a few games to brighten it up some. Instead, IU fell to a Northwestern squad that entered with a 14-18 record. That was the fourth loss against a non-tournament team, and the second in 16 days to the Wildcats.

Against NCAA Tournament teams, Indiana finished the regular season 3-10.

That’s a better winning percentage than Oklahoma, at least. Remember, this team would be safely in the field.

SPORTING NEWS 140:

• SN's All-Time All-America Team
• 15 best NCAA hoops champions of all time
• Mike DeCourcy's Top 10 Final Four memories

New Mexico

Record: 19-15

WAB rank: 59

Quad 1 record: 2-7

Quads 1&2 record: 8-8

New Mexico wisely scheduled some of the country’s best mid-major teams (Santa Clara, VCU) and won, which kept them in the picture for an at-large bid into the final week before Selection Sunday.

The problem was, the Lobos also were required to play in the Mountain West. They lost seven league games, including a regular-season sweep by Boise State.

And of their 19 total wins, 10 were against Quadrant 4 opponents and four against Quad 3. So 73 percent of the Lobos’ victories were of little consequence.

Stanford

Record: 20-12

WAB rank: 58

Quad 1 record: 5-6

Quads 1&2 record: 8-9

Stanford’s record against competition in the top two quadrants seems not as abysmal as some others on this list. But the Cardinal also finished just 4-4 against Quad 3 opponents, the losses coming against major opponents with a combined record of 43-54 and a team that finished with the No. 7 seed in the West Coast Conference.

With a chance still to play their way into serious NCAA contention, the Cardinal lost to 12-19 Pitt in the ACC Tournament opener. In a season with a lot of “bad losses”, as a committee member might say, that was among the worst.

Seton Hall

Record: 20-11

WAB rank: 57

Quad 1 record: 1-6

Quads 1&2 record: 8-10

Always up for a battle, the Pirates simply couldn’t win any. They were 1-7 in games against teams that reached the NCAAs.

They lost their two games against Final Four-bound UConn by a combined 9 points, and one against Sweet 16 squad St. John’s by 5 points. But this is basketball, not horseshoes. And Seton Hall also lost five games against opponents that were nowhere near making March Madness.

California

Record: 21-11

WAB rank: 55

Quad 1 record: 4-10

Quads 1&2 record: 10-15

Still another team that couldn’t beat non-field opponents as regularly as one would expect, the Bears lost seven times to such teams. They countered that with just four wins against teams that made it to March Madness.

Like New Mexico, Cal earned an uncomfortably disproportionate number of its victories in Quad 3 and Quad 4 games. The Bears won only six total games in the first two quadrants. They defeated four NCAA Tournament teams.

There might be an argument that one of these teams, depending on the criteria employed, could have been worthy of inclusion ahead of SMU, which won only three games against opponents that made the field. The Mustangs candidacy was enhanced by their avoidance of low-quality losses -- they were 11-0 against the bottom two quadrants – and wins against top-six seeds North Carolina and Louisville.

There is no case for all of them needing to be included, for concocting this awful contraption that will diminish the conclusion of all coming regular seasons and intrigue few among college basketball’s established fan base and essentially none among those who visit the sport only in March. The bubble talk that envelopes the sport in its final two weeks before Selection Sunday will not create its typical intrigue given the analysts will be holding their noses while discussing.

The proposed format will assure that every capable team has a comfortable ride into March and those that are marginally competent can pretend they achieved something by reaching the newly bloated field.

Maybe those pushing this garbage next will call a risky pass play from the 1-yard-line.

It may be the sport’s only hope.

MORE: The Sporting News' 140 Greatest Sports Moments of All Time

SN COVERS: Check out all the classics from Ty Cobb to Kobe Bryant

SN ARCHIVE: Relive sports history through the pages of The Sporting News