Ok, its not private equity buying a stake of the Big Ten, but the inevitable continues to creep forward in hoops as well:
While an agreement isn’t yet finalized and NCAA executives remain in negotiations with TV partners, officials are now narrowing the scope of an expanded field (76 teams, not 72) and the structure of that field (an additional eight games).
The details are beginning to leak about exactly what a 76-team tournament looks like, starting with the 2026-27 basketball tournaments (not this year).
Eight games are expected to be added to the current “First Four” played over Tuesday and Wednesday of the first week of the event. No, it won’t be referred to as a “First Twelve.”
“We’ll call it the opening round,” says one high-placed executive directly involved in the formation of the expanded bracket.
This new opening round features 24 teams playing in 12 games over the two days, with six games each at two sites (Dayton, the current home of the First Four, plus another likely more basketball-centric Western location). Those involved in the negotiations caution that plenty of this could change through the course of continuing talks with TV partners Warner Bros. Discovery and CBS.
In the opening round, the split is expected to remain the same: 12 lower-seeded automatic qualifiers and 12 at-large selections meeting one another. However, that could always change during the course of negotiations. Under this 12-and-12 plan, eight additional teams would be extracted from the main bracket, plus the eight new at-large selections derived from expansion.
Honestly, I don’t hate the idea of more play-in games rather than using the arbitrary NET to just select one team over another if it was focused on mid/small conference teams than won their regular season but lost in the tournament and other mid-majors that finished second in their conference, but we know the end result is for the 13th and 14th place SEC and Big Ten teams to push out those teams and for more mid/small conference champs to not make the “true” first round of the dance. Making all the 15 and 16 seeds play-in to get their shot at a goliath is a bit cruel if its just opening the dance to teams that went 6-12 in conference play in the Big Ten.
If I was made czar of college hoops with the mission to set the parameters for a 76 team tourney, I’d do this:
I’m going to say NET as stand in for statistical ranking model, but I don’t love NET (another thread for another time)
Group A: 64 teams selected as the committee currently does (31 auto bids to conference champs and 33 at-large by committee guided by NET model, but ultimately up to the humans in the rooms)
Group B: The highest ranked team by NET (or better model) left out of the tournament in each of the 6 top ranked conferences by said model (so in most years that’d be the best Big Ten, SEC, Big XII, ACC, Big East and then A10/CUSA/MWC/MVC depending on the season). No humans, the math picks the teams.
Group C: The 6 highest teams ranked by that same model who won their conference regular season but lost in their conference tournament and did not receive a bid in A or B. If less than 6 exist, the highest ranked NET teams outside the top 6 conferences fill. Again no humans here, the math is the math.
Once you have the 76 teams from the above list, the bottom 8 teams from Group A go into the play-in round. B and C play each other cross group (so B vs C in each matchup seeded).
So the 12 play-in games would be 4 16 seed play-in games (similar to now but all four 16 seeds will be played in), 2 games of the last four at-larges selected by committee (same as now), and then 6 games that put a big conference team vs a conference champ that lost their tourney (or best team remaining if not enough).
Yeah two years ago Seton Hall and Indiana State were legit tourney teams that got screwed by bid stealers. Last year the bubble was complete garbage. 6 (or more) extra at larges will at least let teams like those Seton Hall and ISU teams in, but there’s going to be a lot of crap getting in as well.
