When the tournament expanded from 64 to 68, there were 317 D1 teams - that's 21.4% of teams participating in the knockout tourney. There are now 363 D1 teams, which means 78 teams in spans 20.9%. Again, I'm not celebrating expansion, but I'm not going to rant and rave like Jay Williams and decry that this is "Everyone Gets a Trophy" syndrome.
If you put yourself in the shoes of the NCAA, you're seeing something like The Crown happen in back to back years, and you gotta nip that sucker in the bud. March Madness ratings had a 7% rise over 2025, and the final was the most viewed since 2019. By adding a few more games, you force CBS/Turner to come back to the table to negotiate - and then they're gonna right size that price. And, the expansion will likely favor the power conferences - but yeesh, the SEC and B1G have 18 teams apiece - 10-10 Iowa got to the Elite 8 by the way, so turns out they were a pretty good team.
This also bears out - kenpom 45 rated teams or higher distributed between conferences (I picked "45" because that's usually where the lowest "at-large" rates out.):
- SEC: 11 of 18
- B1G: 10 of 18
- XII: 8 of 16
- ACC: 7 of 18
- BE: 3 of 11
With more guys staying longer "in school" (or perhaps more accurately, "playing NCAA basketball" as I'm dubious at how much classroom time they're actually doing), the quality of college play has reflected this - it's gotten better. (Sure, lack of cohesion due to portaling is also a factor hurting quality of play as well, but overall this also benefits former power conf players now getting 1st team run instead of being stashed on the bench.)
Don't get me wrong - I love that a 64 team bracket fits beautifully on a letter sized sheet of paper. Nobody outside of the NCAA front offices really asked for this; but, given the state of (
waves at everything else), this doesn't bait my rage.
www.espn.com
