The NCAA is expected to finalize an expansion of the NCAA Tournament field from 68 to 76 teams.
On the eve of the NCAA Tournament's Final Four and just a few days away from the National Championship, Yahoo's Ross Dellenger broke the news that the NCAA's competition committee is finalizing the expansion of both the men's and women's tournaments from 68 to 76 teams.
According to Dellenger, barring anything "unforeseen," this will go through, and the tournaments will be expanded.
Details are still coming to the surface, but as it stands right now, the plan is to add eight games to the now "First Four," which becomes the first round of the tournament. That round expands from eight teams to 24 teams before getting to the full tournament bracket.
Just as they are doing in football with the College Football Playoff, they are doing in the basketball tournament as well. The problems that college athletics are facing have nothing to do with the tournament formats.
But just as they are doing with the College Football Playoff, they are talking about expanding it and continuing to make the regular season more and more worthless. For basketball, the regular season is already rendered totally useless.
This decision adds fuel to the fire.
I'm not really sure why it is being decided that we need to have nearly a full tournament in the play-in rounds before the actual first round commences. One thing that I will get on board with is if they make all of the play-in games seeds 14 through 16 so that those teams can have a chance to get a victory.
If that is the case, then the entertainment value will not be there for this round of the tournament, so it almost certainly will not be the case.
They will need big brand names in these games, so expect this to be play-in games for both 10 and 11 seeds, as well as some of the bottom of the bracket teams as well.
For Ohio State, this just expands the field a bit for their men's basketball program that has struggled to get into the tournament consistently over the past half-decade.
This decision is a very odd move for the NCAA to chase more money without solving any of the things that the fans want.
All fans want is a regulation in the transfer portal and NIL, but instead, the NCAA just says, "more postseason games!"
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