The NCAA men's basketball tournament is on the brink of a significant transformation with the potential expansion, a change that could reshape college basketball as we know it.
Commissioners from Division I conferences informed college basketball news outlets that NCAA officials showed them two renditions of a field expansion proposal on Wednesday, one with four more teams and the other eight. Officials refused public comments about the models.
With more at-large picks and one more First Four site, the models would increase the field size from 68 to 72 or 76 teams. Any expansion would not happen until the 2025–26 season at the latest. The women's competition will most likely grow with the men's event.
During the commissioners' annual summer meeting, the models were presented at Wednesday's presentation by Dan Gavitt, the NCAA's VP for the men's basketball championship. Yahoo Sports reported in February that the big conferences were mostly pushing for the men's event to be expanded, and Gavitt, after months of effort, laid out several avenues for this growth, which the commissioners saw as inevitable.
The NCAA and conference executives aim to restore the practice of at-large picks to preserve the 28 small-conference automatic qualifiers, a long-standing and beloved idea among fans. Two sets of 16 seeds and two sets of at-large selections compete in play-in games in Dayton, Ohio, during the First Four, which was introduced with the most recent expansion in 2011, which included four at-large teams.
Any future field extension is anticipated to establish an extra First Four location, maybe in a Western time zone. Adding more teams to the tournament, even by four, is no easy feat.