NCAA Tournament expansion changes an event that didn't need fixing

Nobody asked for this.
 
When we’re talking about NCAA Tournament expansion, it’s important to start with that point. 
 
Don’t get distracted by looking at mock-ups of the new 76-team bracket or by wondering what city might get to share hosting duties with Dayton for the new opening round. And even as NCAA officials pat themselves on the back on Thursday for finally getting expansion across the finish line, don’t get it twisted. This isn’t what fans want. This isn’t even what most coaches want (which is why the men’s basketball coaches’ association refused to take a stance supporting expansion).  
 
It was a decision that was thrust upon those who care about college basketball, and it came from the top down — from the leaders of the most powerful conferences and the leader of college sports’ governing body himself. NCAA president Charlie Baker has been a vocal proponent of expansion for years, believing that a higher percentage of Division I basketball teams deserve to play in the sport’s premier postseason event. On Thursday, he expressed excitement that there would be 240 more athletes that get to participate in March Madness, starting next season. It’s an admirable point to make, but it’s also missing the bigger picture.

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Expansion wasn’t necessary. 
 
But it is somewhat by design. As the SEC and the Big 12 ballooned to 16 teams, the ACC to 17 and the Big Ten to 18, conference leaders argued that they needed more access points so more of their teams could participate in their sports’ most meaningful postseason events. The College Football Playoff expanded from four to 12 teams and is likely to expand further. And here’s basketball’s turn, giving bloated conferences bloated brackets so they can brag about sending so many of their teams dancing. 
 
But it’s better than the biggest brands in the richest leagues taking their ball and going home, right? That’s always been the fear from smaller Division I schools — and Baker himself. He’s pushed for several NCAA changes to appease the Power 4, giving them more power and freedom within the organization’s governance structure. Tournament expansion was on their wish list, too. 
 
That’s why it was so important to so many stakeholders that the NCAA do whatever it takes to keep everyone from the Big Sky to the Big Ten under the same big tent — which keeps Division I schools tethered to one another and makes the NCAA’s crown jewel so valuable. 
 
And not just to television executives. Players and fans, too. The reason it meant so much to make the NCAA Tournament is because it was hard to do so. For one-bid leagues, teams had to walk the tightest of tightropes to earn automatic qualification. At-large teams had to be worthy in the eyes of a selection committee; they had to win the right games and avoid losing too many of the wrong ones. Some sort-of flawed bubble teams always ended up making the dance, but they were better than the seriously flawed squads that ended up on the wrong side of the bubble — and we were all better for that.
 
Moving forward, it will all mean less. The lead-up to Selection Sunday will be less interesting, with so many mediocre teams safely into the field. For teams, making the NCAA Tournament won’t be as impressive a feat. For fans, filling out a bracket will be more annoying. You won’t know which teams will be the four No. 12 seeds in the main draw until Wednesday night. It’s hard to pick a 12-over-5 upset when you don’t know who’s playing in the game.

It’s all frustrating because there wasn’t anything wrong with the status quo. In fact, the NCAA Tournament was as close as it gets to a perfect sporting event. There was a little bit of everything for everyone — for little kids filling out brackets by picking preferred mascots just as much as the gamblers who camp out at Vegas sportsbooks for the tournament’s first weekend. We saw upsets from Cinderella as well as dominance from bluebloods. It all fit together like a puzzle, predictably unpredictable and undoubtedly thrilling. TNT Sports and CBS Sports said this year’s edition delivered its second most-watched NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament since 1994.
 
March Madness wasn’t broken. It didn’t need fixing. 
 
But college basketball leadership decided to change it anyway. Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president of men’s basketball, said on Thursday that a 76-team bracket allows the field to modestly expand but remain in its ideal three-week television window. This expansion — which took years to push through — also allows the NCAA to sell corporate sponsorships in new categories (such as beer, wine and hard seltzer) that will bring in additional revenue. That, plus additional in-game advertising, will drive much of the additional $50 million that the NCAA expects to bring in on an annual basis from its expansion. It’s not much because it’s going to be expensive to pay for eight additional men’s teams and eight additional women’s teams to travel and play. All this effort comes just to put on more play-in games that aren’t all that valuable — at more venues.
 
Teams will receive NCAA Tournament unit payouts for winning opening-round games, which does mean there’s money that will be guaranteed to go to some of the low-major and HBCU conferences whose teams tend to make up the No. 15 and 16 seed lines each March. But it also means that four (of eight) No. 16 seeds and two (of six) No. 15 seeds will lose before the Round of 64. Six teams that won their conferences to get into March Madness won’t get to participate in the main draw. Every single year.
 
But, hey! At least the 14th-place SEC team will get to hear its name called on Selection Sunday.
 
Ultimately, that’s the part of the pill that’s hardest to swallow. There might be a few more mid-major teams that squeak into a 76-team field, but there are also going to be plenty of mediocre Power 4 teams that fill those additional spots. If the bigger bracket had existed in 2026, the men's field would have included an Oklahoma team that lost nine consecutive games in January into February as well as 16-loss Auburn and an Indiana squad that closed out its season by losing six of its final seven games.

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“There are 32 conferences in the NCAA’s (Division I), and not one of them is opposed to expansion at any level. That's a pretty powerful statement,” Gavitt said. “While I know that there's not excitement in some corners of the media and fan base, our schools and conferences are saying, ‘We need this.’ Things are changing, and this is responsive to their needs in keeping what's special about March Madness special for many years to come.” 
 
Said Division I women’s basketball committee chair Amanda Braun: “Rather than looking at this as corrective or fixing something that's broken, it's additive.”
 
We’ll see if the teams that lose these opening-round games feel the same … or if they feel like they didn’t get a real March Madness experience. We’ll see if the office pool managers feel the same … or if they give up because no one’s going to remember to fill out their brackets from scratch on Thursday morning. 
 
It’s hard to predict precisely what we’ll lose by making this perfect sporting event a little worse. It might not feel like much. Or it could be the very soul of the sport. That’s the risk its leaders run by messing around with something that didn’t need it.