After days and weeks of intense speculation, the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments won’t be expanding — at least not quite yet.
In a statement released on July 10, NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt said that no decision has been made on tournament expansion after it was “discussed at length” this week during meetings for the NCAA Division I men’s and women’s basketball committees.
Gavitt added that expanding the fields to 72 or 76 teams, or sticking with the current 68-team model, remain “viable outcomes” in advance of either the 2026 or 2027 tournaments.
The NCAA men’s basketball tournament last expanded in 2011, when the advent of the First Four stretched the field from 65 to 68 teams. The move had an immediate impact, with VCU advancing all the way to the Final Four after it had been one of the last teams selected for the tournament. The NCAA women’s tournament remained at 64 teams until 2022, when it also made the jump to 68 teams.
Whether it goes to 72 or 76 teams — ESPN reported last month that the latter is the more likely option — it would be the largest increase in tournament teams since 1985, when it went from a 53-team event to a 64-team one.
The discussion around tournament expansion has intensified this year. While speaking with reporters at a Big 12 meeting in May, NCAA president Charlie Baker said the NCAA had been having ‘good conversation’ with its media partners about the possibility of increasing the number of teams in the field.
‘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,” Baker said at the time. “If we were to go down this road, you just think about the opening weekends, who has to travel the longest, it gets complicated.’
Though tournament expansion has support from many administrators and coaches — and stands to increase the value of the NCAA’s media-rights deal for the events — it has been a topic of widespread and intense criticism from fans.
Dan Gavitt statement on NCAA tournament expansion
Here’s Gavitt’s statement in full:
“The NCAA Division I Men’s and Women’s Basketball Committees met this week, with the men’s meeting taking place in Savannah and the women’s meeting in Philadelphia. The topic of expanding the field for each championship was discussed at length but no decision or recommendation was made. The still viable outcomes include the tournaments remaining at 68 teams or expanding the fields to either 72 or 76 teams in advance of the 2026 or 2027 championships.”
NCAA tournament expansion history
Though it has been nearly 40 years since there was significant NCAA men’s basketball tournament expansion, the event has grown considerably over the course of its existence.
What began as an eight-team competition in 1939 doubled to 16 teams in 1951. By 1975, it had doubled again, all the way up to 32 teams. It increased to 40 in 1979 — the year that Magic Johnson and Larry Bird famously faced off in Michigan State’s win over Indiana State in the national championship game — and again grew by eight teams in 1980, up to 48. After getting to 53 teams, it became a 64-team tournament in 1985 and remained at that number until 2001, when the formation of the Mountain West created the need for one more automatic bid.
The final round of expansion came in 2011, when three more at-large bids were added to the tournament, making it a 68-team event that included the First Four, a group of four play-in games.
Here’s a look at the history of NCAA tournament expansion:
1951: expands from eight to 16 teams
1953: grows from 16 to 22 teams
1975: expands to 32 teams
1979: grows from 32 to 40 teams
1980: expands from 40 to 48 teams
1983: goes from 48 to 52 teams
1985: expands to 64 teams
2001: adds one team, expanding to 65
2011: First Four implemented, growing field to 68