College basketball’s NCAA Tournament may expand soon, per report

The NCAA is looking to expand the March Madness basketball tournament, a recent report from Yahoo! Sports disclosed. Senior reporter Ross Dellenger broke the news Wednesday.

The NCAA is eyeing a new field of programs that would add in 4-8 teams to the now 68-team field. Dellenger noted that the vice president of the tournament revealed the model recently. If expansion happens, it won’t be until the 2025-26 season at the earliest.

The last time, that the NCAA raised the total of participating teams and added the First Four games, which include a couple of 16-seeds and a couple of 11-ish-seeds squaring off in Dayton, Ohio, was 2011.

The reason for the hopeful expansion is to avoid taking out the automatic bid but also add in more talented programs and give them a shot. NC State’s deep run this past season as an 11-seed is just an example of why adding more Power Five programs could be good for a potential Cinderella story.

Regardless, many of the teams that are in that range and may not make it in could have it argued against them that they haven’t done enough throughout the season and that this expansion could dilute the talent.

Bringing in more teams isn’t going to be an easy sell, but it seems to be one that the NCAA is ready to take on.