A decision on whether or not to expand the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments will be made in the upcoming weeks, sources told ESPN.
If the decision is made to expand, the expansion would begin in the 2025-26 season, per sources, and the tournament would expand to no more than 76 teams. Sources have indicated to ESPN for months that 76 is the more likely expansion option than 72, as the current format for the men’s and women’s tournament is 68 teams.
The NCAA remains in talks with its media partners about the potential expansion, which have been ongoing for months.
An expansion of the tournament would be a historic and potentially controversial step for the NCAA. An eight-team addition would be the biggest jump in how the men’s NCAA basketball tournament has been compromised since 1985.
The men’s tournament expanded to 64 teams in 1985. An additional team was added in 2001, and the expansion to the current 68-team format came back in 2011.
The expectation is that both the men’s and women’s tournaments would grow by the same amount of teams.
NCAA president Charlie Baker has been open in talking publicly about tournament expansion, telling reporters at a Big 12 meeting in May that the NCAA is having “good conversation” with its media partners.
Baker said at the time: “Our goal here is to try to sort of get to either yes or no sometime in the next few months because there’s a lot of logistical work that would be associated with doing this. If we were to go down this road, you just think about the opening weekends, who has to travel the longest, it gets complicated.”
One of the logistics would be the expected addition of at least one additional site, such as Dayton in the men’s NCAA tournament. ESPN reported in February that a location would be expected to be outside the Eastern Time zone.