Have you seen new proposal for a 76-team NCAA tourney bracket? Why it is a loser
AI-generated summary reviewed by our newsroom.
- Top coaches argue a 76-team field will dilute competition and cheapen the title.
- Proposed 24-team opening round forces 16 teams into play-ins, shrinking main draw.
- Expansion aims to shield power-conference mediocrities more than reward small leagues.
Over the past week, some of the most accomplished coaches in Division I men’s college basketball came out against the new proposal to expand the NCAA Tournament to 76 teams.
“I actually have no answers, but my initial gut is I think we’re OK at 68,” said Kansas head man Bill Self.
Kentucky’s old friend John Calipari, now serving in the role of Arkansas’ boss Hog, said “I just think you leave it how it is. Because, if it’s not broken, go with the known. Leave that unknown alone.”
Tennessee coach Rick Barnes fretted that expansion now is opening the door to the day when a team might have to win more than six NCAA tourney games to become the national champion. “That would be my biggest concern,” Barnes said.
In spite of that, Ross Dellenger of Yahoo Sports and On3 Sports reported earlier this month that “the expansion of the NCAA Tournament is coming closer to reality” for 2027.
According to Dellenger, the 2027 NCAA tourney is not only likely to increase by eight to 76 teams, but a substantially different bracket is also likely to be adopted.
If and when the NCAA Tournament moves to 76 teams, Dellenger reported, there will be a new “opening round” that will feature 24 teams competing for 12 chances to move into the traditional 64-team bracket.
The 12 lowest-seeded automatic qualifiers — which will be conference tournament champions of leagues well down the college hoops food chain — will face off in the opening round. So will the 12 lowest seeded at-large teams, the overwhelming majority likely to be middling power-conference squads.
The winners of those 12 games will play their way into the 64-team bracket, where 52 teams will already have been seeded.
Though “follow the money” generally leads one to the source of major college sports decisions, Dellenger quotes NCAA President Charlie Baker as denying that an expanded March Madness is being pushed for revenue reasons.
It is not a “big moneymaker,” Baker said of tourney expansion, adding the NCAA’s goal would be to make enough from the “Opening Round” to cover the expenses created by an expanded field.
Instead, Baker said the primary factor driving a move to 76 is getting deserving teams typically left out of the field of 68 into March Madness.
“There are every year some really good teams that don’t get to the tournament for a bunch of reasons,” Baker said. “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. I don’t buy the idea that some of the teams that currently get left out aren’t good. I think they are. And I think that sucks.”
Actually, the evidence from recent men’s NCAA Tournaments suggests there are often NOT ENOUGH teams worthy of making a field of 68.
Last season, the first four teams omitted from the 2025 NCAA tourney were West Virginia (19-13), Indiana (19-13), Ohio State (17-15) and Boise State (24-10).
Among the last four teams into the field were North Carolina (which was 1-12 vs. Quad 1 opponents) and Xavier (1-9 in Quad 1 games).
Rather than deserving teams being left out of last year’s NCAA tourney, undeserving teams had to be included just to fill the 68-team bracket.
That reality was not a one-year anomaly. In 2024, the first four teams out of the NCAA Tournament were Oklahoma (20-12), Seton Hall (20-12), Indiana State (28-6) and Pittsburgh (22-11).
For 2023, the first four teams omitted from the NCAA tourney were Oklahoma State (18-15), Rutgers (19-14), North Carolina (20-13) and Clemson (23-10).
Of the 12 combined teams among the first four out in the past three NCAA Tournaments, only Indiana State in 2024 had a meritorious case for inclusion.
Alas, the driving impetus behind NCAA tourney expansion is not to provide access for deserving teams from “smaller” leagues — such as the Sycamores of the Missouri Valley Conference.
It is to protect the power conferences from the consequences of their own realignment actions. The ACC (18 teams), Big Ten (18), Big 12 (16) and SEC (16) have all grown so large, the risk is the teams in league play will beat each other into mediocrity.
The NCAA Tournament expansion push is to create additional March Madness access for what is expected to be a growing number of power-conference mediocrities.
A proposed 76-team bracket, with a 24-team “opening round,” will pull out eight automatic qualifiers and eight at-large teams that would have otherwise been in the field of 68 under the present format and force them into the new “play-in” round just to reach the main bracket.
That will lessen the NCAA Tournament experience for 16 teams in exchange for giving eight additional squads a berth in a play-in round.
NCAA Tournament expansion remains a solution in search of an actual problem, an idea so bad it can’t be killed.
