North Carolina, despite a mediocre 15-11 record, would be safely in the NCAA Tournament. Same for middling Wake Forest, up-and-down Kansas State and winless-in-Quad-1 games SMU.
That’s what the NCAA Tournament would look like. That’s apparently what the powers that be want, to expand the field by eight also-ran teams, add more schools that don’t belong.
ESPN reported on Saturday that if expansion is agreed upon, the likely scenario is going from 68 teams to 76, and there have been talks with media partners about the possibility for a while. Nothing is definitive, but it seems like this is trending in the wrong direction. There’s been too much smoke over the last year, powerful commissioners like Greg Sankey of the SEC and Tony Petitti of the Big Ten publicly pushing this. NCAA president Charlie Baker said in December that there were ongoing talks to add onto the current 68-team format and that he was “bullish” on expanding by either four or eight teams.
Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president of basketball, said there’s more interest in expansion than at any time over the past 12 years he’s worked within the sports body. That said, no decision is imminent.
