{"id":3675,"date":"2026-05-10T13:54:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-10T13:54:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=3675"},"modified":"2026-05-10T13:54:36","modified_gmt":"2026-05-10T13:54:36","slug":"ncaa-basketball-tournaments-will-expand-to-76-teams-next-season-5","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=3675","title":{"rendered":"NCAA basketball tournaments will expand to 76 teams next season"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By EDDIE PELLS<\/strong> AP National Writer<\/p>\n

The NCAA announced Thursday that it will expand its two March Madness tournaments by eight teams each next season, a long-expected move that will drop more games into the first week of the highly popular and lucrative showcase without substantially changing its overall form.<\/p>\n

Read more Dodgers\u2019 Blake Snell will make 2026 debut on Saturday; Tyler Glasnow to IL<\/a><\/p>\n

The new, 76-team brackets will jam eight extra games \u2013 for a total of 12 involving 24 teams \u2013 into the front half of the first week of the men\u2019s and the women\u2019s tournaments. It will turn what\u2019s now known as the First Four into a bigger affair that will now be called the \u201cMarch Madness Opening Round.\u201d<\/p>\n

The 12 winners will move into the main 64-team bracket that will begin, as usual, on Thursday for the men and Friday for the women.<\/p>\n

It is the first expansion of the tournaments in 15 years, when they were bumped from 64 to 68 teams each. The expansion from 68 teams to 76 marks the men\u2019s tournament\u2019s largest increase since it moved from 53 to 64 teams in 1985. It went from 64 to 65 in 2001 and then added three more teams in 2011 to form the First Four.<\/p>\n

The NCAA said it will distribute more than $131 million in new revenue to schools that make the tournament. That money will come via expanded TV advertising opportunities for alcohol, the likes of which were previously restricted. It said the value of the rights agreement will increase $50 million each year on average over the course of the six years.<\/p>\n

Most of the eight new slots are expected to go to teams from the power conferences that were already commanding the lion\u2019s share of entries in the bracket. Two years ago, the SEC placed a record 14 teams in the men\u2019s bracket. Last season, the Big Ten had nine.<\/p>\n

Keith Gill, the chairman of the Division I men\u2019s basketball committee, called the expansion \u201ca nice way to create some access but make sure we have the bracket we all love when we start Thursday at noon.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

The move is a product of the times, which includes massive expansion \u2013 the Atlantic Coast Conference, for instance, has grown from nine to 17 teams since 1996 \u2013 and the reality that mid-major schools with top-notch players will often see them plucked away by programs with bigger budgets and the ability to pay them through revenue sharing.<\/p>\n

Cinderella? There will still be room for those stirring runs in the tournaments, though not a single mid-major advanced past the first weekend of either tournament the last two seasons.<\/p>\n

This is hardly a concern of the decision-makers anymore, who will point to TV ratings that traditionally spell out fans\u2019 preference for the likes of Duke and North Carolina over St. Peter\u2019s and San Diego State, especially once the Sweet 16 starts.<\/p>\n

What matters more to the biggest schools is that their teams have a chance to compete in what remains the best postseason in college sports and that they aren\u2019t iced out by lower conference champions who earn automatic bids.<\/p>\n

\n<\/div>\n

\u201cYou\u2019ve got some really, really good teams who are going to end up in that 9, 10, 11 (seed) category that I think should be moved into the\u201d\u00a064-team bracket, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said last year in discussing how he favored expansion.<\/p>\n

Also, the money. The new beer and wine money will add to what the NCAA can distribute in \u201cunits\u201d that are earned for placing teams in the bracket and then for every round those teams advance.<\/p>\n

Last year, that amounted to about $350,000 per unit for the men\u2019s tournament. The Big Ten made nearly $70 million from both tournaments, won by conference members Michigan (men) and UCLA (women).<\/p>\n

Leaders in the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12 and ACC have all acknowledged that smaller programs help make March Madness what it is, all the while steadily expanding their own power in NCAA decision-making. That brings with it the tacit threat of fracturing the single thing the NCAA does best \u2013 the basketball tournament.<\/p>\n

This move might forestall that. What it isn\u2019t expected to do is drastically change the TV deal beyond the advertising.<\/p>\n

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The current deal for the men\u2019s tournament is worth $8.8 billion and runs through 2032. Adding a few extra games between mid-level Power Four teams on Tuesday and Wednesday won\u2019t change that much.<\/p>\n

One of reason this took as long as it did was the NCAA negotiations with CBS and TNT, which themselves have been in negotiations over their own ownership.<\/p>\n

The more drastic option of expanding the tournament to 96 teams or beyond would involve adding an extra week to a tournament that has thrived in part because of the symmetry of a six-round bracket that gets whittled down over three weeks.<\/p>\n

That basic shell began in 1985, with only slight tweaks along the way.<\/p>\n

Movement toward expanding the tournament has been ongoing for more than three years, as the College Football Playoff expanded and college athletics contended with conference realignment and the growth of the four biggest conferences. In January 2023, the NCAA Division I board of directors approved a transformation committee\u2019s recommendation to expand all sports\u2019 championship events to include 25% of teams. The men\u2019s basketball committee began discussing expanding the field that summer.<\/p>\n

The NCAA presented expansion plans to Division I conference commissioners in the summer of 2024, including options to increase the fields to 72 or 76 teams. NCAA president Charlie Baker publicly endorsed the move in the spring of 2025 and reiterated his support on multiple occasions \u2013 pointing to access as the biggest reason for expansion.<\/p>\n

\u201cFrom my point of view, the more teams we can get into the tournament and make it work logistically and mathematically, the better,\u201d Baker said in February. \u201cIt gives more kids the opportunity to experience that.\u201d<\/p>\n

Although potential expansion for the 2026 NCAA Tournament was tabled last summer, momentum among decision-makers and conference commissioners was clearly headed in the direction of expansion.<\/p>\n

The various committees that needed to approve the decisions \u2013 the Division I Men\u2019s and Women\u2019s Basketball Committees, the Division I Men\u2019s and Women\u2019s Basketball Oversight Committees, the Division I Finance Committee, the Division I board of directors and the NCAA board of governors \u2013 officially voted to expand on Thursday.<\/p>\n

HOW IT WORKS<\/h4>\n

The lowest-seeded 12 automatic qualifiers as seeded by the selection committees will play in half of the opening round games and the other six games will match the 12 lowest-seeded at-large teams.<\/p>\n

Teams will continue to be paired to face the opponent nearest to them on the committees\u2019 overall seed lists. For example, seed 75 might play seed 76 in one opening round game, while the lowest-seeded at-large team might face the second-to-lowest-seeded at-large team.<\/p>\n

Exceptions could be made, for example, to avoid a regular-season rematch or for geographic purposes.<\/p>\n

The opening round men\u2019s games will be the Tuesday and Wednesday after Selection Sunday in a location to be announced later (reportedly west of the Eastern time zone to help with logistics) and in Dayton, Ohio, which has been the traditional home of the First Four. There will be three games each day at each site.<\/p>\n

Among at-large teams, two games will match No. 11 seeds and four will match No. 12s. Among the automatic qualifiers, two games will match No. 15s and four will match No. 16s.<\/p>\n

The details are the same for the women\u2019s tournament except that opening round games will be held the Wednesday and Thursday after Selection Sunday on the campuses of 12 of the top 16 seeds selected to host the first and second rounds.<\/p>\n

Read more Dodgers\u2019 Freddie Freeman carries Bobby Cox\u2019s lessons with him<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The March Madness men’s and women’s brackets will grow by eight teams next season in a move that is expected to reward more power conference teams.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2010,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[19,2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3675","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-facts","category-news"],"yoast_head":"\nNCAA basketball tournaments will expand to 76 teams next season - Silicon Valley Moving Post<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/siliconvalleymovingpost.com\/?p=3675\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"NCAA basketball tournaments will expand to 76 teams next season - 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