NCAA men’s and women’s tournaments expanding to 76 teams in 2027

Credit: NCAA

March Madness just keeps getting bigger. As to whether or not that makes it better remains to be seen.

As first reported by Yahoo Sports’ Ross Dellenger, both the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball selection committees approved the move to include 76 teams on Thursday. The motion was ratified by the basketball oversight committees and the DI Board of Directors and Board of Governors, making it official.

The long-expected move adds eight additional at-large teams to each tournament. Eight opening-round games will be paired with the current First Four, with participating teams split between the lowest-seeded automatic-qualifier bids and at-large bids.

Six of those games will be played in Dayton, while the other six will be played at yet-to-be-determined sites. Those games will be played as tripleheaders on Tuesday and Wednesday of the tournament’s opening week.

The 12 winners of those games will then be slotted into the bracket with the 52 squads that then make up the traditional 64-team setup.

Tournament expansion received support from the Big 12, the ACC, and NCAA president Charlie Baker, who previously said that too many good teams were being excluded under the previous format.

“There are every year some really good teams that don’t get to the tournament for a bunch of reasons,” Baker said last year. “One of the reasons is we have 32 automatic qualifiers [for conference champions]. I love that and think it’s great and never want that to change, but that means there’s only 36 slots left for everybody else.”

Most of those excluded teams have mediocre records, but that’s apparently what college basketball’s power brokers want to reward these days. A little too late for this year’s Auburn squad, but they shouldn’t have much of a problem getting in starting in 2027.

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