ORLANDO, Fla. — The president of the NCAA said he sees value in expanding the Division I men’s basketball tournament by a handful of teams and wants to reach a decision on the matter in the next few months.
Charlie Baker, now two months into his third year as NCAA president, spoke Thursday during the Big 12 Conference spring meetings, where the 16-team league’s leaders are discussing everything from the multibillion-dollar revenue-sharing settlement from the House v. NCAA antitrust lawsuit to complexities brought on by the transfer portal as well as name, image and likeness compensation.
Baker discussed the idea of expanding from 68 teams to 72 or 76.
“We’ve had good conversations with CBS and WBD,” Baker said, referring to Warner Bros. Discovery, whose holdings include the Turner networks that air NCAA tournament games. “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.”
The NCAA tourney became a 64-team event in 1985, added another team and a play-in game in 2001, then grew to its current field of 68 in 2011. The latter change introduced the First Four, a round in which the four lowest-seeded at-large teams and four lowest-seeded conference champions compete for spots in the traditional 64-team bracket.