The NCAA won’t discuss expanding the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments until after this year’s version 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 NCAA 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 NCAA already has had “good conversations” with TV partners CBS and Warner Bros., whose deal runs through 2032 at the cost of around $1.1 billion a year.
The NCAA Tournament expanded from 64 to 68 teams in 2011. The change introduced the First Four round, a set of pre-tournament 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 basketball committees.
“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 television partners to pay for the expanded tournament.
“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.”
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.
Reporting by The Associated Press.
