Earlier this year I wrote a long piece about how college basketball will not die, which was conveniently titled College Basketball Will Not Die. I still believe that like a cockroach, it can survive any form of nuclear warfare or fallout. We will still watch, and we will still stay invested almost regardless of what is to come today, tomorrow, or in 40 years.

But, well, I don’t have to like it. 

The latest change, as everyone is well aware, is that the NCAA is expanding the Division I men’s and women’s tournaments to 76 teams each. The NCAA is entering a new era, a Twilight Zone, that still feels unreal to type out. 76 teams. Does that not feel off to you to say, to think about it, to roll off the tongue? All over an idea showing the popularity of this move being roughly a Lizardman’s Constant margin of error away from zilch?

The move reveals what the NCAA's priorities really are, and while I have known what they are for a long time I would have appreciated it not being made so clear. I mean, it's about money and conference politics and things that don't help out fans. It's not about competitive integrity, structural elegance, or...well, anything you or I like. It's about what they want.

Being upset about it feels futile. The NCAA has been threatening to expand to 96 teams since I was in high school and has explored expansion beyond 64/65 teams, and since the mid-2000s or so there's been a pretty consistent call for expanding the field regardless of the proposed number. Enjoy this bizarrely scanned copy of Jim Boeheim's call for more or less what we're getting now, just from April 2006 and not April 2026.

The Baltimore Sun, April 2, 2006

I can like this move as much or as little as I want to, but it's not gonna make a difference. 94% of people surveyed in that Dauster poll, which would give it a margin of error of +/- 2.5% at very worst, do not want this. The only true positive opinions of it I've seen that would make me reconsider my stance is two of the smartest people I know wanting it, but even then. That's two versus thousands. Thousands who, fair or not, feel their voice is being ignored, whether intentionally or not.

Whether or not expansion is a success kinda seems to be subjective, at least to me. Will it be a monetary success? Maybe, but based on the current TV deal, this is more or less a rounding error until the 2030s. Will it result in better teams making the field who wouldn't have gotten in otherwise? Uh...maybe, but probably not, at least based on Bart Torvik's TeamCast, which suggests the eight new entries (average NET ranking of 48.6) would be around a seed line worse than the bottom eight entries this year (44.9). Will it result in a better Round of 64? Now that the 'new' 12 seed line will all be Power Five teams (and maybe a Nü-Pac 12 entry), I guess the 5/12 games might improve, but since COVID the 5 seed win rate (67%) is only a little above what it is historically (~60%).

The one objective answer I can provide a "yes" or "no" to is "does this format give you more NCAA Tournament games." Well, yeah, it does. But did we need them?

Being overly emotional one way or another about Tournament expansion seems a little much to me, even though I did greatly appreciate Matt Norlander's excellent rant on the subject. In general I keep coming back to the same few points, so maybe I should lay those out instead of vomiting more. Here are all of the reasons I, Will Warren, Protagonist of History, do not like or support this move.

1) This won't improve Tournament quality. Well, why delay? I'm not sure that the quality of the sport, particularly in the middle of the top 100, was such that more spots for at-large teams were necessary. As I've mentioned for a while, the gap between the top end and bottom end of the top 50 (roughly what we're calling at-large territory) is the largest it's been in 25+ years.

My fear is that, sans guardrails - and there really seem to be zero for this - we are going to end up with 80% of the new entries being slightly worse First Four teams who perform slightly worse than First Four teams normally do.

The pro-addition(s) argument I've seen in the past usually offers support for 'better' games, but...I mean, were we really dying on the vine because we didn't have an Oklahoma State/Virginia Tech game to watch? The First Four was a lame thing that turned cool because 1) it was a compromise of its own that helped us avoid the Nuclear Option of a 96-team field, and 2) the novelty of 16 vs. 16 games actually ended up being fun. (It also helped that several First Four winners went on Tournament runs.) The Extraneous Eight is going to give you a 4 PM ET tip-off between two 16-loss teams.

My point is less that I hate the teams I'm listing and more that I didn't need them in the field to enjoy the NCAA Tournament. Will I look foolish if a 12-seed Power Five team that lost 15 games becomes the first 12 seed to make the Final Four? I'm willing to accept that as a possibility, but frankly it's not something I was missing in my daily life.

2) It solves a problem that didn't previously exist, thereby introducing a new problem that didn't previously exist. I want you to think, long and hard, about the 40 new entries in hypothetical 76-team fields from 2022 through 2026. Here is the full list of teams that I wanted in the field over someone else by quality and not by personal feelings, i.e. because the coach used to subscribe to my old newsletter.

  • 2026 New Mexico. Sue me, I thought they were better than SMU was by season's end. Not really an exclusion I lost sleep over, though.
  • 2024 Indiana State. This is the leading example for why Tournament expansion needed to happen. Indiana State being left out was such an atrocious, indefensible move that the NCAA finally adopted Wins Above Bubble three years too late. Everyone was mad about Virginia getting in over them but to be honest, I could've done without Colorado getting in that year, or Michigan State, or even FAU. None of those teams touched Indiana State.
  • A team that wasn't 2023 Arizona State. I can't really figure out who I would've wanted more from the available options that was objectively worthy. Maybe North Texas?

That's a total of three teams out of a possible 40 that I did want in the field. If we were that desperate, just swapping out SMU for UNM or one of five teams for Indiana State would've sufficed. I also have to acknowledge that, yeah, we live in a clickbait world where everything is getting a little worse daily. But can my fellow writers STOP writing about Tournament 'snubs' for good now? It pops up every single year, a list of the first four or five teams out, and it gets dumber every single year. There has been one - Indiana State - that any neutral fan has cared about since COVID.

3) It's creating an additional new problem I never anticipated. I guess I am stupid, because at no point in my life did I think "man, it would be so cool if Lehigh had to go through a play-in game before playing Duke." Well, guess what!

Also, did you know that in 2023, Sweet 16 team Princeton would've had to play UNC Asheville in a play-in game for no damn reason? This is punishing the teams I thought fans wanted to elevate. Wait a minute! I'm being told that's the point.

4) Individual losses won't mean any less, but losers will be less lost. Let me explain. This year, Oklahoma lost an astonishing nine straight games and was 11-12, 1-9 SEC on February 4. They entered March one game north of .500. After a brief run where they beat zero top-30 KenPom teams, they made it all the way to second team out in the NCAA's list, mostly because everyone around them eliminated themselves.

Under the new 76-team model, Oklahoma is not only in the field, they're not even one of the last four in. A team that was 11-12, 1-9 SEC, and was under .500 until the end of February can make the field with ease. Look, at least Auburn had the excuse of playing the most difficult non-conference schedule in existence. Oklahoma's ranked 313th. Come on. I don't believe that Tournament expansion makes the regular season matter that much less, but you are going to have to deal with teams you think are awful getting in with relative ease.

5) At least 80% of the new bids are gonna go to Power Five teams. John Gasaway did make a nice point about this in his piece after expansion was announced:

I am a huge John fan and I'll always enjoy his work, but...look, my friend. I think the fact that 20% (or 21%?) is worth celebrating is perhaps merely recognizing the symptom rather than the cause. The sport's continued subservience to the SEC and Big Ten is, more frequently than not, likely to result in more bids going to the SEC and Big Ten. The 2025 76-team Tournament would get Boise State in - very nice! - but when the final spot would have either gone to San Francisco (53rd in WAB, 64th in NET) or Cincinnati (62nd in WAB, 49th in NET)...well, is that a win? I don't think it's a win, especially if it goes to Cincinnati.

6) More Division I teams doesn't necessarily mean we needed more Division I Tournament spots. Norlander laid this case out last summer, which I generally agreed with. Some here and there quibbles but nothing major. If 'access' mattered the way I think access would matter, the 76-team Tournament would include four locked-in spots for regular season champions who didn't win their conference tournaments.

7) Tuesday and Wednesday are actual work days now. Let me explain from a writer's standpoint. From the Selection Show through about Wednesday afternoon, everyone who works at this site is drinking from the proverbial firehose. We are all working ourselves crazy, attempting to put out the best analysis and the best product possible. Tuesday is quietly huge for productivity, because there's only two Tournament games and we're able to get a lot of pre-Thursday/Friday work done that adds to our analysis significantly.

With a six-game Tuesday and Wednesday, likely going from around 4 PM ET to midnight, every college basketball website you know will lose depth in analysis to ensure all 76 teams get coverage. It's a very dumb complaint, I'm aware, but I can promise you the quality of coverage will get worse for this very reason. It shortens our proverbial turnaround and will make us all work horrendous hours on Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday to get you everything you need. Be forewarned.

8) I can't print the damn thing. You already have a hard enough time finding a GOOD-LOOKING BRACKET with 68 teams in it. What are we going to do with a 76-team bracket in PDF form? I just looked up what this may look like on an 8.5" x 11" sheet, and...

Are they gonna print it like that in USA Today? I'm also seeing this. Guys, my eyes aren't getting any better. I got upped to a +2.5 in both eyes on my contacts last fall.

I also hate the amount of ORs that will be shown here. 12 different FIRST FOUR (TEAM/TEAM) entries. I don't even like making brackets anymore, but there is a real magic in filling exactly one (and no more than one) out late on Selection Sunday or the Monday after. Now, you'll be forced to wait until either late Wednesday night or early Thursday morning to fill anything out...which I will bet right now results in the first-ever reduction in bracket entries since I've been alive.

Here is the most likely course of events that will take place over the next 11 months:

  1. We will complain the entire season about expansion.
  2. We will discuss expansion for the entire season.
  3. When the 2027 NCAA Tournament begins, we will be mad about how bad the bubble teams who got in are and how they would've never gotten in before expansion.
  4. We will probably watch all 75 (yes, 75) games of the 2027 NCAA Tournament.

For better or for worse, it's who we are. We complain about a thing, we recognize said thing is getting both more expensive and lower-quality, and yet, we have no other alternate choice for said thing. This is our Tournament, and it can still be our Tournament for a million lifetimes.

I do not believe college basketball will die, not in a million lifetimes. Yet undeniably, I do think college basketball is entering a sort of Twilight Zone as it embarks on a 76-team field. It's going to feel a bit unreal when Selection Sunday arrives, and I'm not sure when or ever it'll feel normal. This new uncanny valley the NCAA has broken through to feels like a realm we were perhaps not supposed to enter. The door is behind you, but there is no way to go back.

This isn't the only expansion I am annoyed by. I think the 48-team World Cup sucks, the Euros should've stayed at 16, it was better when the NFL season was an even 16 games, and I have no idea what the point of the NBA's play-in games (plural) are when they have an 82-game season to decide such things. Hell, it even annoys me that in a rare good decision from NASCAR - going back from their own Twilight Zone to a points system that the average person likes - they kept the 16-team playoff field that will almost certainly include multiple duds who shouldn't be there.

But you know what? I still watch all of these things. Perhaps I am the problem. Welcome to the Tipping Point. We'll see where it goes from here and just how illogical or dreamlike it becomes.