Source: NCAA uses 72-, 76-team tourney strategies

Jun 20, 2024, 02:08 PM ET The NCAA has actually provided a strategy to Department I conference commissioners that would broaden the guys’s and females’s basketball tournaments by four or eight teams alongside an alternative to leave each field at 68 teams, a source confirmed to ESPN on Thursday.The propositions

were laid out to the commissioners this week by NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt and NCAA vice president for women’s basketball Lynn Holzman, the source said. Under the proposition, growth of the 68-team field consisted of both 4- and eight-team models. The NCAA would keep its 64-team bracket but would add play-in games including the Nos. 10 through 12 seeds.Editor’s Picks

If the guys’s competition broadens, it is anticipated the women’s tourney would as well. Yahoo Sports initially reported on the proposals.

“It is proper to take a look at growth, and we require to do that,” ACC commissioner James Phillips said Thursday during the Associated Press Sports Editors summer conference. “We’re looking at it.”

Phillips didn’t go into details on the proposition, which he stated now “enters front of the basketball committee, basketball oversight.”

“When do you get to the point when the regular season does not matter?” Phillips stated. “Modest growth is something I would prefer.”

There are lots of in college basketball who have said they think the 68-team fields and three weekends of play are ideal, but pressure has grown to add groups and games to among the most popular sports events on the U.S. calendar. Last year, the NCAA Department I board of directors authorized recommendations that included permitting one-quarter of teams in bigger sports to contend in champion events; in that situation, the March Insanity competitions could broaden to nearly 90 teams.Sources informed ESPN throughout this year’s competitions that ongoing conversations about broadening March Madness would lead to no more than 80 teams for the men’s event.The NCAA remains in the midst of an eight-year extension of its

TV deal for the men’s competition worth$ 8.8 billion that goes through 2032. That would not be anticipated to change if a handful of groups are added.More games would offer a small boost through ticket sales and merchandise, however the swimming pool of cash the NCAA utilizes to pay out conferences and member schools would basically remain the exact same. What could alter, however, is how that cash would be divided up if the tournament broadens.Expansion would also suggest the men’s tournament would need to discover an additional website besides Dayton

for its First 4 games. The Ohio city already has games on Tuesday and Wednesday and would not be able to host extra play-in games ahead of the tournament’s traditional Thursday first round. Women’s play-in games are at the very same school websites as the very first two rounds of the tournament.Expansion is largely backed by larger conferences, and smaller leagues do not want to lose the automatic quotes that include a conference tournament champion or face the possibility of constantly being slotted for the play-in games.The earliest the NCAA tournament might broaden would be the 2025-26 season, the source said. The NCAA basketball oversight committee fulfills next week, and the tournament choice committee has a meeting next month.The guys’s tournament last broadened in 2011 when it went from 65 to 68 teams. The women’s competition went from 64 to 68 groups in 2022. The ladies’s tournament is coming off its most effective year ever that consisted of a record audience of 18.7 million for the title game win by South Carolina over Iowa, the highest for a basketball broadcast of any kind in five years. It outdrew the men’s championship game–

when UConn claimed its 2nd successive title with a win over Purdue– by nearly 3 million audiences. The ladies’s competition likewise had record attendance.The Associated Press contributed to this report.