INDIANAPOLIS — Will the NCAA Tournament expand in 2027? Maybe, maybe not, but we know we won’t have an answer in the immediate future. On Thursday, NCAA senior vice president Dan Gavitt told reporters participating in the mock selection committee exercise that talks on expansion will be paused, with a resolution not coming until after the 2026 NCAA Tournament at the earliest.
Earlier on Thursday, NCAA president Charlie Baker neglected to answer an expansion question when asked at the organization’s headquarters. Baker met with 10 members of the media and wrapped the informal interview session by reinforcing his opinion: he would prefer to see March Madness expand.
“I think there’s some very good reasons to expand the tournament, so I would like to see it expand,” Baker said.
The NCAA’s men’s and women’s basketball committees have been debating and deliberating the concept of expanding their 68-team tournaments for close to four years now. The general public — and much of the sports media — stands opposed to the idea of watering down one of the country’s most treasured sporting events.
“For now, we’re still talking to the various players in this one,” Baker said. “You have to remember that some of the folks we’re talking to are going through some pretty interesting corporate conversations of their own. And I think for us, we accept and acknowledge that, but we’re still talking.”
Baker added that, regardless of what decision is made, the NCAA Tournament will remain with its 32-team automatic-qualifier format (which has never been in jeopardy of changing) in addition to the at-large bids that fill up the field. Baker is of the belief that the 36 at-large cutoff is too small for the number of teams that should get a crack on the biggest stage in the sport.
“That leaves 36 spots,” Baker said. “That means you’re going to leave a bunch of the top 50 teams out of the tournament, right? … I mean, couple years ago I was kind of bummed when Seton Hall and Indiana State didn’t get in the tournament, because they both had quality wins and quality schedules. … The more you do to create opportunities for the so-called bubble teams each year to get into the tournament, first of all, it puts some other really good teams that probably might belong there. But it also protects the AQs, right? Because I don’t want to end up in a situation where people say we need to do something about the AQs because we’re keeping too many good teams out of the tournament.”
CBS Sports asked Baker how much it would presumably cost the NCAA to add 16 more schools to the men’s and women’s tournaments. The cost element has been one of the biggest blockades in the past three years to expansion efforts.
“I think we can figure out how to pay for it. I’m not worried about that,” Baker said.
When pressed on the cost in terms of how many millions of dollars the NCAA is projecting to add to its expenses, Baker neglected to give more specifics. He was also asked what his expectation was for the 2027 NCAA Tournament and he declined to go on the record with a prediction.
If the NCAA is going to opt to expand for 2027, a decision would need to be made in the spring. This issue has loomed over college basketball for a very long time, which speaks to the logistical challenges at hand, in addition to widespread resistance of changing March Madness.
In addition to expansion talk, Baker spoke at length about the challenges of player eligibility and the constant battles the NCAA has been faced with in regard to rosters, NIL regulations and more. He noted the NCAA has a much better track record in court than is often reflected in the media.
“We win a lot more of those cases than we lose,” he said.
The NCAA provided the statistics: Since December of 2024, there have been 56 lawsuits filed in eligibility cases. Thirty of those 56 have seen denials for the plaintiffs and 12 have been granted. There are seven still going at the state court level now and five are pending. A local judge recently ruled against Charles Bediako’s case at Alabama, while Trinidad Chambliss recently logged a victory in court to give him a sixth year of eligibility at Mississippi.
Baker also said the NCAA is having conversations and bracing for the possibility that a few college football players might try to explore options to return to their college teams, should they fail to make NFL rosters at training camps in the summer of 2026.
“It’s certainly something we’ve been talking with folks about it,” Baker said. “The basketball piece is just different than the football piece for a whole bunch of reasons, but it’s certainly something we’re discussing.”
On the topic of eventual collective bargaining, Baker was passionate that it’s probably not happening or feasible.
“You’d have to get a federal law passed to do that, first of all,” he said. “Secondly, student athletes don’t want to do that. And third, when everybody says [to collectively bargain] they don’t talk about are scholarships now taxable under that arrangement? Does this apply to all the kids in college sports? Because if it does, you can have kids in college sports who are going to have to write checks to their schools to pay for all the benefits they currently get, they don’t get taxed on that become benefits that are taxable because they’re employees. There’s a lot to that issue that nobody ever talks about. … Saying that is a simple answer to this is not a legitimate response.”
The NCAA has undergone massive changes in the past five years, and Baker has been a proponent for modernizing the 120-year-old organization. For all the progress that has been made with NIL legislation and player empowerment, profound problems still exist and, judging by Baker’s comments on Thursday, seem unlikely to be resolved in any major, tangible way in 2026.
“People get paid a lot of money to crystal ball this stuff,” Baker said. “It’s a hard crystal ball, because so much of it is often driven by outside elements and circumstances, which in some cases are totally unpredictable.”
