Field of 76? As usual, the NCAA can’t resist the urge to do the wrong thing
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The NCAA is reportedly finalizing a plan to expand the NCAA Tournament from 68 to 76 teams.
Formalized expansion could come as early as next month, with changes being implemented in the March 2027 edition of the NCAA Tournament.
As my colleague David Wasson wrote earlier this week, expansion of March Madness is truly pure March Sadness.
There are few perfect things in life. A Sunday nap. The first cold snap of air after a sweltering summer. Bob Dylan’s Blood on the Tracks. The warm smile of a stranger on Christmas Eve. Amen Corner at the Masters. These are few of life’s perfect things.
The NCAA Tournament, as currently constructed as a Field of 68, fitting precisely as a grid bracket on a single sheet of paper, is as close as college sports gets to perfection.
The NCAA, with its longstanding history of poking and prodding where it doesn’t belong, couldn’t resist the urge to tinker with perfection. Some songs are better left unsung, but here we are, staring down the barrel of change almost no one that watches college basketball truly wants.
NCAA leadership insisted on Tuesday that “no final decision has been made,” but the reality is the reshaped landscape of super conferences and power conference expansion created pressure to expand the field the NCAA appears simply disinclined to resist, even if there’s minimal evidence, at least presently, that expansion will have anything beyond a modest financial upside.
When expansion is finalized, NCAA leadership will likely sell the 8 additional at-large berths as an inclusive measure designed to bring more potential Cinderellas to the ball.
Don’t believe them.
Expanding the Field of 68 to a Field of 76 isn’t going to get more Miami of Ohios or VCUs into the field. Expansion is directly related to the continued growth of the Power 5 conferences, and the natural outcome of expansion is that it will benefit mediocre power conference teams, giving us more Power 5 teams with middling résumés while blowing up the perfect symmetry of our beloved 64-team bracket in the process.
The data already tells us expansion is silly and unbalanced.
For those uninspired by the thought of a .500 Auburn team getting into the field, or a 17-16 Arizona State receiving an invite, get used to it. The Power 5 commissioner refrain tends to be that their middle-of-the-pack (heaven forbid we call them mediocre) teams play tougher schedules than mid-majors, who lack the upper-end résumé power to earn at-large consideration. Look no farther than a Miami (Ohio) team with a 31-1 record being shipped off to Dayton to see what I mean. But the reality is that even in the current system, many Power 5 at-large invitations aren’t just rewarding power conference teams that play tough schedules. They are rewarding Power 5 teams that simply for being Power 5 teams.
Take 2025, when a 22-13 North Carolina team with just 1 victory in Quadrant 1 (despite 14 opportunities) was given a bid. Did the Tar Heels deserve to be in because they played a tough schedule? Or did they play a tough schedule largely as a result of Power 5 status, losing almost all the résumé-building opportunities that status afforded them in the process? While North Carolina (and other Power 5 teams, like Auburn a year ago) undoubtedly schedule ambitiously, much of their ability to do so is tied to Power 5 status. Big time opponents are willing to play North Carolina and Auburn, largely because the perception, fairly or not, is that losing to North Carolina or Auburn won’t have a highly detrimental impact on their résumés come March. That’s a luxury that teams from the mid-major ranks, like Miami (Ohio) a season ago, simply don’t have.
“I’m sympathetic to those mid-major schools that want big time résumé opportunities,” an SEC head coach told me via text this week, asking to remain anonymous because he’s still scheduling for 2026-27. “I also understand why those schools don’t always want to play on the road. But this isn’t socialism. I’m not going to take my team to play a mid-major in their building in November, risk losing, and lose a seed line come March because I gave someone a shot. It’s just bad business.”
Expansion won’t change that, and the data backs that up. There have been 91 Division I teams added since 1984-1985, when the field expanded to 64 for the first time. Those 91 teams have earned a total of 172 bids. Guess how many of those have been at-large bids? Two. Both of those went to UCF, in 2019 and last season. The Knights, by the way, used the 2019 at-large bid as a selling point to join the Big 12, where they now compete safely under the umbrella of the Power 5’s protection.
In fact, for all the dreamcasting about how a bigger field will result in more equity and opportunity, only 2 programs who have joined Division I in the last 40 years have advanced to the second weekend: Florida Gulf Coast (Sweet 16, 2013) and Florida Atlantic (Final Four, 2023).
What’s more, while Cinderellas undoubtedly still exist, at least in recent memory, the last 2 NCAA Tournaments have been the chalkiest in 2 decades, with established Power 5 programs playing deeper into March than ever before. Is that a justification to reward high-major mediocrity? Or should the NCAA be tough enough to stare down the likes of Auburn and Arizona State and say, without trepidation, that the failure to field a high-quality team in spite of all their Power 5 resources is precisely what the system should strive not to reward?
None of this, by the way, is an argument against Power 5 basketball, which the NIL era has made as enriching and competitive as ever. Take the SEC as exhibit one. Thanks to hard work by SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey, SEC Associate Commissioner Garth Glissman, and the league’s various members, the SEC has traveled the road from parochial college basketball backwater to arguably the best league in college basketball.
The SEC has ranked No. 1 in KenPom and Torvik, 2 databases used by the Selection Committee, over the past 2 seasons, producing 3 1-seeds, 5 Elite 8 appearances, 2 Final Four appearances, and a national champion (Florida, 2025) in the process. That journey took plenty of investment and hard work, and the SEC’s excellence on the hardwood will have staying power for the foreseeable future. But the fact the SEC is now excellent in basketball isn’t an argument for expansion. If anything, it’s an argument that the current structure is already working for the SEC. The SEC is thriving in the current system, and if a member institution misses the field, they simply aren’t good enough — and they have options about how to address that failure.
There’s no need to expand the field to make room for the mediocre.
The entire point of March Madness is to reward excellence with opportunity. That’s what makes the NCAA Tournament so compelling, and why what is a niche sport from November-February captivates an entire country come March. With a simple sheet of paper and 68 teams, a bracket offers joy and unity for an entire month of the calendar. In an era where so many things in college sports are changing, why not resist the urge to disrupt the perfection that is March Madness? Why tinker with a wonderful, unbroken thing?
The reality is if Power 5 teams want “in” on the March fun, they have plenty of opportunities from November to Selection Sunday to win and get in. We don’t need to expand the field to bail out bad basketball teams that can’t figure that out.
March is about good basketball teams. It’s about a Field of 68, whittled to a perfect 64 by Thursday afternoon. Cue the music.
March Madness as it should be, a cultural institution worth preserving.
Neil Blackmon covers SEC football and basketball for SaturdayDownSouth.com. An attorney, he is also a member of the Football and Basketball Writers Associations of America. He also coaches basketball.
