Report: Major update emerges on future of NCAA Tournament, expansion

There has been plenty of chatter recently that the NCAA Basketball Tournament will be expanding at some point in the near future. However, a report on Thursday from Matt Norlander of CBS Sports threw plenty of cold water on that idea. According to the report, a decision on future NCAA Tournament expansion for men’s and women’s basketball is not expected to happen before the end of the year. That’s according to NCAA Senior Vice President Dan Gavitt.

Gavitt also told CBS Sports there is a possibility that the tournament doesn’t expand at all, at least not in the “near-term.”

“The most important thing to get across,” Gavitt said on the Eye on College Basketball podcast, “this is definitely not a fait accompli. The recommendation to not expand the tournaments is absolutely a potential outcome here in the short-term.”

According to Norlander, the reasons for putting off a decision on expansion are tied to financial issues, as well as different opinions within the NCAA on the “competitive viability” of expanding both the men’s and women’s tournaments. “Many in the NCAA are proud of the tradition, distinct marketability, and symmetrical appeal of the March Madness bracket that’s been built over the past 40 years, with a formula that is unmatched in American sports,” Norlander noted in his report.

CBS Sports reported in June of 2023 about a decision that had been made to either keep the tournament at 68, or expand the field to 72 or 76 teams. Both the men’s and women’s committees have met multiple times on the topic, with very little movement on the decision. The idea of expanding the tournament has also been resisted by college basketball fans across the country.

Gavitt also made sure to push back on recent media speculation in the past few weeks that expansion for the tournament was going to be a done deal in the near future. He made sure everyone knows the future of the beloved event is very uncertain.

“It has felt like, in some cases over the last few months, there’s been more reporting around, ‘Well, this is a done deal, it’s going to happen,’ and I can assure you that’s not the case,” Gavitt said. “I couldn’t predict as I sit here today what the outcome is going to be.” 

While there is no specific deadline or timetable for the men’s and women’s basketball committees to figure out whether or not to expand by 2026, Gavitt said that late April/early May is the “window that needs to be met”, if any sort of change is going to happen for the 2026 NCAA Tournament.

Expanding the tournament is a very, very complicated issue, Gavitt made sure to get across.

“Expansion, even in a modest level, is complex, more complex, I think, than has been recognized and reported, because it is expensive,” Gavitt said. “It’s expensive because of additional team travel, per diem, game operations, but also the basketball performance funds, the units that are earned throughout the men’s and women’s basketball championships.”

Dan Gavitt is the son of the late Dave Gavitt, who formed the Big East Conference in 1979. Dan Gavitt has been with the NCAA for the past 13 years, but has spent his entire life in college basketball, which demonstrates his unwavering love for the game.

The men’s version of the 2025 NCAA Tournament gets underway with the First Four on March 18-19. The women’s version of the First Four begins on March 19-20.