Please, please, please do not expand the NCAA Tournament to 76 teams

The NCAA could learn a lesson from the guacamole I made last week. The avocados were pristinely ripe, the tomatoes profoundly plump, and the spices masterfully balanced. My first taste test was so good, it generated an involuntary eyebrow raise. But then a small, never-satisfied voice in the back of my head urged me to make what was perfect even better. “Add salt,” it goaded. “Just a pinch to make this guac truly mind-blowing.” So, I did. After all, it was just a little bit more of a good thing, right? But with a single shake of the salt shaker, my perfect guacamole ceased to exist, diminished by my unsuppressible instinct for perpetual tweaking. It went from magnificent to mediocre with one bad decision.

The NCAA basketball tournament is my unsalted guacamole.

With 68 teams in the field, it is one of the best events in all of sports. The drama is exquisite, the competition impeccable, and for the NCAA overlords, the profits are bountiful. And yet, those same executives stuffing cash into crevices they didn’t even know existed are greedy for more, looking to squeeze every last drop of yolk from their golden goose.

In the coming weeks, the NCAA will decide on whether or not to expand the NCAA tournament to 76 games, effectively adding eight more at-large teams to the round currently dubbed the First Four. I’m sure there may be a few teams who find themselves consistently on Joe Lunardi’s bubble that would welcome a lower threshold for entry, but as CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander puts it, very few sports topics have less public support than changing the tournament.

Show me the money

Let’s be clear: this is not an effort to showcase a broader swath of collegiate talent on the national stage or any other faux competition-related rationale you might hear. This is an unadulterated money-grab, plain and simple. Eight more teams mean four additional games to which the NCAA can market and sell to CBS, which can, in turn, hawk advertisements to eyeball-hungry companies. That’s it.

To be fair, part of this financial desire is not for the Scrooge McDuck-like reasons I just stereotyped. In this emerging era of an increasingly growing number of bank accounts to which universities are legally obligated to contribute, the need for additional revenue isn’t purely buying a second yacht for the NCAA president. Ideally, these additional funds will be distributed to schools for their player budget.

It is a complicated payment model, but reports showed the SEC received $70 million from the 2025 NCAA tournament, money that, at least in part, filtered down to the schools. No doubt, more than a few athletic directors are channeling their inner Oliver Twist since the House settlement, holding out their empty bowl to their conference executives and sheepishly asking for more.

However, this fiscally-first line of thinking minimizes the importance of the beautiful product on the court to an ordinary product on a store shelf. Approaching this decision strictly in terms of profit casts aside the impact that expanding to 76 teams would have on the remarkable entity itself. Remember, March Madness isn’t just a collegiate tournament; it is a cultural event.

Don’t mess with a cultural phenomenon

All around the world, hardcore fanatics and casuals alike fill out brackets in both friendly and high-stakes competitions to determine the best prognosticator of their group. Of course, most online bracket challenges don’t even start until the first weekend, ignoring the First Four games out of the universal understanding that everyone has a handful of friends and coworkers who are never going to have their bracket filled out by Tuesday night.

Perhaps the same mindset of “The tournament doesn’t really start until Thursday” would persist if the First Four became the First Twelve, but if anything, this quirky truism exemplifies how meaningless those First Twelve games would be viewed.

Moreover, these additional eight teams, who would otherwise be making NIT plans, are not exactly going to showcase the best college basketball has to offer. This is going to be the equivalent of Wednesday of the SEC tournament, when a sub-.500 LSU team faces off against Vanderbilt in an empty arena. Sure, people will tune in because it is still technically the NCAA tournament, but it requires a level of sacrifice to postseason basketball quality that most fans are unwilling to make.

To stick with the food and drink analogies, expanding to 76 teams only dilutes an otherwise delicious jar of lemonade.

Is the NCAA going down a slippery slope to further expansion?

Why stop at 76? In 10 years, when players and coaches demand higher salaries, is the NCAA going to further dilute this tourney to 128? Over half of the teams in the NBA make the playoffs, so why not the NCAA? To answer my own sarcastic question, a 128-team tournament would be dumb and all but negate the importance of the regular season. 76 is a slippery slope to 128.

And to those arguing that the additional teams in the field could not make it far, history would disagree. In 2011, the very first year the tournament expanded to 68 teams, one of the last four teams in, VCU, made it to the Final Four. The randomness of the single elimination format is what makes March Madness great, but further expansion gives undue credence to mediocrity.

Everyone likes it when a 16 seed with 21 wins, like Fairleigh Dickinson, upsets a 1 seed, like Purdue, but no one is on the edge of their couch when Big-4 teams with losing records like Minnesota and Arizona State, battle on a Tuesday afternoon, despite both teams having the most gaudy color combination in sports.

Please don’t do this, NCAA

Admittedly, I was against the field’s expansion to 68 teams in 2011, and yet, I have grown to appreciate the First Four as the tournament appetizer it is. The shrimp cocktail before the main course. I’m sure we all have uncles who protested the field’s expansion to 64 teams in 1985 for many of the same reasons I’ve gone through, and yet they are the first people to fill out their brackets in the family pool. Things change, and people get used to the changes over time. Such is life.

But, I’m pleading with you, NCAA. Please, please, please don’t do this. I know money is tight lately and CBS is dangling dollars in front of your face like a hypnotist’s watch. But please don’t add any more salt to the guacamole. Don’t expand to 76. It is great as it is.