March Madness is close to becoming more maddening.
The NCAA is moving closer to expanding its 68-team men’s basketball tournament to a 76-team bracket for the 2026-27 season that would feature 12 opening-round games instead of the First Four, according to On3.
An agreement has yet to be finalized.
Those initial games will still be played across Tuesday and Wednesday before the Round of 64 tips off Thursday, but will now be played across two sites instead of just Dayton, Ohio, per the report.
“We’ll call it the opening round,” an anonymous executive told On3 regarding the branding changing from the First Four.
The process for selecting which 12 teams play in the new opening round will be the same as it’s been for the First Four — 12 of the lower-seeded automatic qualifiers will play against one another, while 12 of the last at-large selections will square off.
During a July address to the National Press Club, NCAA president Charlie Baker dismissed the notion that expanding the tournament was about more revenue from television partners, saying the extra games would not be a “big moneymaker,” per Yahoo.
“There are every year some really good teams that don’t get to the tournament for a bunch of reasons,” Baker said at the time. “One of the reasons is we have 32 automatic qualifiers (for conference champions). I love that and think it’s great and never want that to change, but that means there’s only 36 slots left for everybody else.
“I don’t buy the idea that some of the teams that currently get left out aren’t good. I think they are. And I think that sucks.”
Two months ago, the NCAA’s senior vice president of basketball, Dan Gavitt, announced the fields for the 2026 basketball tournaments would remain at 68 teams.
“Expanding the tournament fields is no longer being contemplated for the 2026 men’s and women’s basketball championships,” Gavitt said in a statement on Aug. 4.
“However, the committees will continue conversations on whether to recommend expanding to 72 or 76 teams in advance of the 2027 championships.”
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