The NCAA has presented a plan to Division I conference commissioners that would expand the men's and women's basketball tournaments by four or eight teams along with an option to leave each field at 68 teams, a source confirmed to ESPN on Thursday.
The proposals were outlined to commissioners this week by NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt and NCAA vice president of women's basketball Lynn Holzman, the source said. According to the proposal, the expansion of the 68-team field included four- and eight-team models. The NCAA would keep its 64-team bracket but add play-in games involving the 10th through 12th seeds.
If the men's tournament expands, the women's tournament is expected to do so as well. Yahoo Sports was the first to report on the proposals.
“It's appropriate to consider expansion, and we have to do it,” ACC Commissioner James Phillips said Thursday during the Associated Press Sports Editors' summer conference. “We are analyzing it.”
Phillips did not go into detail about the proposal, which he said will now “go before the basketball committee, basketball oversight.”
“When do you get to the point where the regular season doesn't matter?” Phillips said. “I would prefer a modest expansion.”
There are many in college basketball who have said they believe 68-team fields and three weekends of play are ideal, but pressure has mounted to add teams and games to one of the most popular sporting events on the American calendar. Last year, the NCAA Division I board of directors approved recommendations that included allowing a quarter of major sports teams to compete in championships; In that scenario, March Madness tournaments could expand to nearly 90 teams.
Sources told ESPN during this year's tournaments that ongoing discussions about expanding March Madness would result in no more than 80 teams for the men's event.
The NCAA is in the midst of an eight-year extension of its television deal for the men's tournament worth $8.8 billion that will run through 2032. That wouldn't be expected to change if a handful of teams are added.
More games would provide a small boost through ticket and merchandise sales, but the pot of money the NCAA uses to pay conferences and member schools would remain essentially the same. What could change, however, is how that money would be divided if the tournament were to expand.
The expansion would also mean the men's tournament would have to find an additional site besides Dayton for its First Four games. Ohio City already has games on Tuesdays and Wednesdays and would not be able to host additional games before the traditional first round of the tournament on Thursday. The women's play-in games are held on the same campuses as the first two rounds of the tournament.
Expansion is largely supported by larger conferences, and smaller leagues don't want to lose the automatic bids that come with a conference tournament championship or face the prospect of always having a spot for play-in games.
The earliest the NCAA tournament could expand would be the 2025-26 season, the source said. The NCAA basketball oversight committee will meet next week and the tournament selection committee will meet next month.
The men's tournament was last expanded in 2011, when it went from 65 to 68 teams. The women's tournament went from 64 to 68 teams in 2022.
The women's tournament is coming off its most successful year, which included a record audience of 18.7 million for South Carolina's victory over Iowa in the title game, the highest for a basketball broadcast of any type in five years. . It topped the men's championship game, when UConn claimed its second straight title with a victory over Purdue, by nearly 3 million viewers. The women's tournament also recorded record attendance.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
