NCAA Tournament taking ‘final steps’ towards expansion to 76 teams

Credit: Kirby Lee-USA TODAY Sports

Consider the bracket officially busted.

The almighty NCAA is reportedly in the “final steps” of expanding the NCAA Tournament to 76 teams on both the men’s and women’s sides, according to ESPN’s Pete Thamel. The move is expected to be formalized in the coming weeks and the expanded tournaments will begin for the 2026-27 season.

Thamel reports, “NCAA officials met with the media partners for the men’s tournament last week,” and, “The sides are in the final steps of the media contracts … but they have not been signed.” ESPN owns exclusive rights to the women’s tournament, while CBS Sports and TNT Sports share the men’s tournament.

Despite more games being added, “the expansion isn’t expected to be a financial windfall.” At the end of the day, the NCAA is adding eight play-in games on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the tournament begins on Thursday. Those play-in games are, naturally, among the least-valuable inventory of any NCAA Tournament games, meaning any additional revenue generated from them will be incremental at best.

Prior reports indicate that ESPN will not pay any additional rights fees for expansion to the women’s tournament, while CBS Sports and TNT Sports are expected to pay a modest increase.

As such, the argument for expansion is not about money, but access, Thamel reports. Power conferences, which have grown in size amid years of realignment, want to ensure more of their teams get bids into the Big Dance.

The new format will see 24 teams compete in play-in games on the Tuesday and Wednesday prior to the first round. That means each team on the 9, 10, and 11-seed lines will compete to get a spot in the traditional 64-team bracket. In total, eight teams that would’ve been guaranteed a spot in the 64-team field under the old format will now need to play their way in.

It’s unclear exactly how the television windows will be allocated for the additional games. As it stands, the “First Four” plays two games on Tuesday night and another two games on Wednesday night. To fit eight additional games in, television windows will likely creep into daytime working hours for most of the country.

Suffice it to say, most fans are not particularly thrilled with such a severe alteration to the most beloved postseason in sports. Whether that resentment will continue one, three, five, or ten years from now remains to be seen. But as it stands, this is a deeply unpopular decision by a deeply unpopular body in the NCAA.

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