NCAA president Charlie Baker reveals latest on expanding NCAA Tournament field for March Madness

It’s a topic that comes up seemingly every year: Expanding the NCAA basketball tournaments. And while it’s not out of the question, NCAA president Charlie Baker said any expansion would be limited.

On the “Dan Patrick Show” on Wednesday, in a discussion about the College Football Playoff — which the NCAA does not oversee — the topic of the NCAA tournament fields came up. Patrick asked Baker if the possibility of expanding to 96 teams was in the cards and the answer was rather definitive.

“No we’re not. The most we’ll ever go to is somewhere in the 70s. The calendar is very, very limited in how many games we can slam into that period of time,” Baker said.

As of right now, the tournament field is at 68, with a number of play-in games winnowing the field down to 64 teams prior to the Round of 64.

To keep the math simple, any expansion into the 70s would likely involve adding four or eight more teams, taking the field to either 72 or 76 teams.

NCAA leadership proposed expansions to 72, 74 teams in the summer

College sports leadership took another big step toward expanding the NCAA Tournament, Yahoo! Sports’ Ross Dellenger reported in June. Commissioners were presented with a model that would expand March Madness by four or eight teams as early as the 2025-26 season.

NCAA vice president for basketball Dan Gavitt presented the models to commissioners, and an idea would be to expand at-large bids instead of taking away the automatic bids from smaller conferences. The tournament could also see an additional First Four site, along with Dayton.

If such expansion occurs, the 64-team bracket will stay in place, Dellenger reported. That means the NCAA would look to bring more teams in by adding play-in games.

Rumors of NCAA Tournament expansion have swirled for some time, but Wednesday’s presentation is the first presentation to commissioners. The expectation is if the men’s tournament grows, the women’s will, as well.

The NCAA Tournament field expanded to 68 teams in 2011 with the introduction of the First Four. However, chatter increased over the last year about adding more teams to the field. SEC commissioner Greg Sankey made waves after saying “we’re giving away highly competitive opportunities for automatic qualifiers,” but Dellenger’s report suggests expansion will include more at-larges.