The NCAA men's basketball committee — a group of 12 Division I athletic directors and commissioners, the same people who determine the bracket for each season's NCAA Tournament — are meeting this week in Park City, Utah, along with select NCAA staff to address a variety of items pertaining to March Madness. The biggest topic on the agenda is also the most polarizing: potential tournament expansion. While there is no guarantee a decision on expansion will be made this week, it will be the most consequential talking point.
This plot will advance again, as it did a few weeks ago. The selection committee's annual summer summit comes 19 days removed from NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt flying to Florida to speak at a different convocation — the Conference Commissioners Association's meetings — to brief college sports' heads of state on where things stands with potential expansion. We now know the NCAA is considering three options: Keep the field at 68 teams Increase the bracket to 72 Inflate to 76 "There certainly was conversation about expansion but it was a clear that no expansion on the table, too," said one source who heard Gavitt speak in June.
"It's not like this was presented as a guaranteed thing." If you've forgotten why tournament expansion is even a topic — other than typical sports greed — we reached this point due to the existence of the NCAA Division I Transformation Committee , a venture created in 2021 by former NCAA president Mark E.
