The NCAA won’t discuss expanding the Division I men’s and women’s basketball tournaments until after this year’s edition of March Madness finishes, senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt said Thursday.
Gavitt told that to a group of reporters who were attending an NCAA event in Indianapolis. There has been talk for the past few months that the college sports sanctioning body could expand the tournament field to 72 or 76 starting in 2027.
NCAA president Charlie Baker said last year that adding teams could add value to the tournament, and he said the association already has taken part in “good conversations” with television partners CBS and Warner Bros., whose deal runs through 2032 at the cost of around $1.1 billion a year.
The NCAA tournament most recently expanded in 2011, going from 65 teams to 68. The change introduced the First Four round, a set of games in which the four lowest-seeded at-large teams and four lowest-seeded conference champions compete for spots in the traditional 64-team bracket.
Baker said in November that he supported expanding the tournament, but that the decision was up to the committees that deal with the sport.
“I don’t want to get ahead of the basketball committees on this one, but I would hope we could find a way to get there,” he said.
Baker admitted that expansion to potentially 76 teams would cause some logistical headaches such as moving teams playing in that opening round around the country on short notice. That doesn’t outweigh the positives — if they can get more money from their TV partners to pay for the expanded tournament.
Last season, for the first time, women’s basketball teams earned financial incentives, known as units, for playing in the NCAA tournament. The formula can be complicated, but the bottom line is conferences received $113,000 for each game a women’s team played in the NCAA Tournament up until the Final Four.
The NCAA decided at its convention in January to award additional units to women’s teams that made the championship game and the overall winner. The money for the additional units will be added to the total pool and not cause the value of each unit to drop at all.
“One of the things comes with the benefit of having (units) on both sides is that you give schools and conferences reasons to invest in the sport,” he said. “I think this will make it more likely that schools will put additional resources into the game, which is good.”