Expanding the NCAA basketball tournament is on hold for now.
NCAA senior vice president of basketball Dan Gavitt announced Monday that the field for the annual spectacle known as March Madness will remain at 68 teams for the 2026 season.
“Expanding the tournament fields is no longer being contemplated for the 2026 men’s and women’s basketball championships,” Gavitt said in a statement. “However, the committees will continue conversations on whether to recommend expanding to 72 or 76 teams in advance of the 2027 championships.”
The idea of expanding the tournament to either 72 or 76 teams had picked up steam in the spring and NCAA president Charlie Baker said in May that he saw value in adding more teams to the tournament.
Public pushback against expanding the tournament has been strong, with fans and numerous notable college basketball reporters clamoring to keep the field at 68 teams.
Field of 68 founder Rob Dauster posted a poll on X on July 9 asking followers if they wanted expansion. Nearly 12,000 people responded with a shocking 93.5% voting no.
“Today is a GREAT day for college basketball,” CBS college hoops reporter Jon Rothstein, a major voice against expansion, wrote. “This is what VICTORY feels like. Our way of life has earned the right to go on! Anarchy? Nope. Just Common Sense.”
Though there has been no concrete plan for how expansion would work, speculation has centered on bringing more at-large teams, likely from major conferences, into the 64-team bracket.
NCAA Tournament expansion has been discussed on a near annual basis in recent years, with the last increase from 64 to 68 taking place in 2011.
That change introduced the First Four round, four games held in Dayton where the four lowest seeded at-large teams and four lowest-seeded conference champions compete for a spot in the main bracket.
Who should be in and who shouldn’t, typically referred to as “the bubble,” dominates conversation every March. West Virginia’s governor even went as far as to call for an investigation after the Mountaineers were left out of this year’s field.
Michigan and Michigan State were both comfortably in the field last season and any expansion would only help both top Big Ten programs.
Tom Izzo and the Spartans have the longest active NCAA Tournament streak in America having earned a spot in the field for 27-straight seasons.
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