The NCAA Tourney is Expanding to 76 Teams -- The Cash Grab of all Cash Grabs

Hello again, Bean's Bloggers. It's been a minute.

I took a mini-hiatus over the last 3-4 weeks as travel/work/etc got a little crazy. But I'm hoping to get back into a better groove in the coming months.

And what better time to hop back in the saddle than when the NCAA pumps out the most disgusting, blatant cash-grab, desecration to the Sports World's best Postseason Tournament? cracks fingers over keyboard

If you missed the news Tuesday -- it's been reported that the NCAA is in the final steps to expand the Men's and Women's NCAA Basketball Tournaments from the current 68 Teams, to 76 Teams, as early as next season.

If you read that news and think any of the following:

• This could be good for the sport!

• Maybe expanding will make it more accessible for all schools!

• This won't change the NCAA Tournament that much!

I'm afraid you're sorely mistaken.

The NCAA Tournament -- March Madness -- is, to me, the best Postseason event in all of sports. Even after they expanded to 68 teams from 64 -- which to be clear, was stupid itself. Now they are expanding it another 8 TEAMS to 76. This is malpractice of running a sport. It's a giant kick in the dick to College Basketball fans -- Hell, to all sports fans.

And there is one singular reason the NCAA wants to expand the tournament: Greed.

The millionaires and billionaires that run the NCAA are gluttonous, incompetent, money-grubbing pigs, who would rather shut down every low and mid-major institution across this country than pass up an opportunity to add money to their pockets. They don't care about the sport of College Basketball AT ALL. They just want more games played -- which makes them more money.

It's also about giving more access to Tournament Spots for Power Conference teams. And this is the point they're going to try and trick you with all offseason while they get this asinine rule passed. They're going to say "this levels the playing field for the small and mid-major schools! More spots up for grabs for everybody!"

When the reality is -- there is a greater chance that all 8 of these extra spots go to Power Conference teams with .500 records than even half of the spots going to mid-majors with 25+ win seasons. And the playing field in College Hoops will continue to gradually become more and more tilted to those Power Conference teams, even more than it already is in the NIL era.

If this expansion had happened in the 2025-2026 season -- the teams that would be getting these spots would be the 18-15 Cincinnati's, the 17-16 Auburn's, the 18-14 Indiana's. The teams that aren't good enough to win half their games in their own conference will be claiming the extra 8 slots.

Not 27-6 UNC-Wilmington, or 26-7 Liberty, or 24-7 Yale, or 28-5 Belmont, or 28-6 Stephen F. Austin. Teams that actually win the basketball games they play won't be rewarded -- schools with high enrollment and good marketing that can barely scratch 16 wins in a season will be rewarded.

Not to mention the fact that it's going to completely fuck up the seeding of the Tournament. I've ranted about the fact that, regardless of how good or bad your conference is -- if you win your conference, you should get a REAL Tournament game guaranteed. No play-in bullshit like four 16-seeds have to do every year since the expansion to 68 teams.

Now with 76 teams? All four 16-seeds will be determined by play-in games. That means 8 teams that won their conference tournament will have to win a game that no one cares about just for the right to lose to Michigan or Florida by 50+ points.

There will be 12 total games in the new "Opening Round" (as the First Four is officially dead). 4 of those will be 16-seed games -- as well as 2 of the 15-seeds will be decided by play-in games. Just an all caps FUCK YOU to any school playing in a small conference. "Hey thanks for participating -- we're going to make it so you can never win a real tournament game ever. You're welcome!" - The NCAA, probably.

So that's 6 games -- the other 6 games will likely be split among 11-seed, 12-seed, and 13-seed play-in games. Which is bad for a few reasons -- most notably the fact that they will be games filled with undeserving teams. But it's also going to fuck up seeding because there's going to be crazy disparity among the seed lines.

The standard "Last 4 In" teams in a normal NCAAT will be playing in those 11-seed play-in games -- think NC State and Texas this past year. While 2 undeserving teams -- let's say Arizona State and Oklahoma -- are playing in a 13-seed play-in. They have an equal shot of making the NCAAT as Texas and NC State do -- which is ridiculous, because those are 2 teams by the metric we follow that ACTUALLY DESERVE TO BE THERE.

Another factor is that it screws over the teams that earn those 4 and 5 seeds in the Tourney. Let's take St. John's and Alabama in this past tourney as examples. #5 seed SJU played UNI in the Round of 64 -- cruising to a 20+ point win. #4 Bama played #13 Hofstra -- also a 20-point win. Those 5/12 or 4/13 games can be tricky -- shoutout High Point -- but the whole goal of earning a top-5 seed in the tournament is you get a greater chance at making the Round of 32.

In this new system -- instead of playing against UNI and Hofstra -- St. John's is going to draw a Power 5 team that's gotten to play a warm-up game and get a win while they rest for a week+. Same for Bama -- a team with Power 5 size and athleticism, that's also gotten a warm-up game. I love Cinderellas, but on most occasions, a team that plays in a Power Conference against those schedules is going to be a tougher team to beat than a mid-major.

Which all circles back to the main point, that sucks -- we are going to see a steep -- and I mean STEEP -- drop in the amount of Cinderella teams that make runs in March Madness. It was already going to be more difficult going forward in the NIL Era -- now it will be nearly impossible, as all mid-major conference winners are likely to be seeded in the 13's and 14's instead of those 11's and 12's we love to see go on runs.

So to recap -- that's less Cinderella candidates, who get worse seeds that make their paths more difficult, but more mediocre Power 5 teams that have better chances of beating the actually-fun-to-watch good teams that earn 4, 5, and 6 seeds in the Tournament. Instead of seeing more High Point runs -- we're going to see more 2021 Oregon State's making runs to the Sweet 16.

(if you don't remember that OSU team -- they were genuinely bad and unfun to watch, but caught fire at the right time).

So I hope you all appreciated the NCAA Tournament as we knew it -- because things are changing for the worse. And the funniest part of it all -- the NCAA knows they're making it worse! They know that ZERO fans actually want this to happen! They know it's the wrong thing to do!

They just couldn't give a singular fuck about fans -- all they care about is making a little extra scratch on some play-in games no one actually cares about. If it were up to me -- we'd all band together and boycott the play-in games so they make no money off of viewership. Just wait till my bracket updates with 64 teams to see who won them.

Phew. I needed to get that off my chest.

If you listen to my podcast alongside my best buds Ben and Mitch -- Four Corners Show -- you'd know that the 3 of us are adamantly against this expansion. And if you don't, do us a favor and give it a listen.

If you have been listening -- you may remember that before the NCAA Tournament field was set for 2026, I gave a pitch on how I would handle expanding the NCAAT Field. Let me be clear -- this was my "there's a gun to my head about to pull the trigger if we don't expand" pitch -- because the last thing I want is to add more teams to this shit show.

And this plan of mine is not perfect -- because there is no way to cater to expanding the Tournament by 8 teams perfectly. No matter what you do with the formatting, it's going to fuck over some teams. But in the current system, it fucks over the small auto-qualifiers and mid-majors -- my aim is to change that.

The skinny of my plan -- if we're going to expand, let's actually prioritize doing it the right way. And more importantly -- let's make sure we're adding the correct teams. The teams that deserve to be there. So here's my pitch:

The field is expanding by 8 teams -- meaning we have 8 at-large bids to be filled and 12 total play-in games to be played. The Last 4 In will stay as is -- whoever the committee deems would fill those slots, whether they're a mid-major or Power 5. Of the 8 remaining spots -- half can be filled with Power 5 Teams. The Auburn's/Oklahoma's/VA Tech's/Arizona State's/etc that I've ranted on too much already.

The kicker -- the other 4 teams that fill those last 8 at-larges -- need to be mid-to-low major schools. Reward the Belmont's/UNCW's/Yale's/Liberty's that pump out 25+ win seasons, but fall short in their conference tournament because it's hard to beat a team in your conference 3 times.

Not only is this good for the health of the sport and allowing mid-majors to grow -- it pumps the play-in games full of so much electricity and drama that it'll break viewership records. It can be marketed as the "High vs Mid Major Play-In Tournament."

Think about all the drama online during the last 2 weeks of this past College Basketball season -- how many people were up in arms about Miami Ohio, for example. "Miami Ohio can't be left out of the field with only 1 loss!" versus "If Miami OH can't go undefeated in that crappy conference -- leave them out!"

Or what about the discourse around Auburn during that stretch? "They're barely .500 -- how on Earth could the committee let them in?" versus "They're an SEC team playing against a gauntlet -- they'd be undefeated playing Miami OH's schedule!"

Credit to Auburn winning the NIT -- they won that argument last season.

Instead of one side being happy and the other side being pissed -- now we get to see both sides put their money where their mouth is. Auburn vs Miami OH in a play-in game for the 11-seed. Put up or Shut up.

We saw it in the play-in this season -- Miami Ohio beat the brakes off of SMU in the First 4. They heard the disrespect -- and they played outstanding in response to it. So I think there's plenty of mid-majors that would like that same chance -- teams who are getting disrespected by every Power 5 Blow-hard in America pulling for their mid-ass team. They'll be licking their chops at the opportunity to prove them wrong.

The marketability of doing the play-in this way is vast -- it's inherently compelling television and would actually drive viewers, plus massive crowds to these games. It'll form a rivalry across the entire sport of people defending the mid-majors vs the Power 5's -- and the amount of buzz that would be generated from this format would be insane.

It would also present the opportunity for 8 of the 12 play-in games to be genuinely intriguing match-ups. The system isn't perfect -- it will still leave us with 4 play-in games being needed between 16-seeds. However, I feel less bad about 16's having to play their way in, becuase that's a lot of revenue and publicity generated for these small schools. And it keeps 15-seeds, that historically have been able to pull off more upsets and close games in the R64, from playing in.

The full format would be as follows -- 12 play-in games needed to be filled. 4 will be 16's. So we are fielding the other 8 play-in games with 12 "at-large" teams -- the 8 teams we're expanding the field with, plus the "last 4 in" teams. These 12 teams will play a knockout bracket -- each of the Last 4 In teams get a one-round-bye. The 8 expanded teams will be matched up Power 5 vs. Mid-Major. The winner of those 1st round play-ins will advance to play the "Last 4 In" teams that received a bye. The winners of those rounds earn the four 11-seeds in the bracket.

This Play-In Tournament is played on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the Tournament -- the expanded 8 have to win games on back-to-back days to earn their spot in the NCCAT. It would be easy enough to schedule the real Tournament to have all the 6 vs 11 match-ups to be played on Friday rather than Thursday.

This plan not only rewards more auto-qualifiers with real tournament games -- but forces the expanded field to truly prove why they deserve a spot in the Tournament. You feel slighted and don't think your record represents how good of a team you are? Go win back-to-back games. It also eliminates the problem of 4 and 5 seeds getting punished -- they'll get to play the same low/mid majors they do currently rather than a Power 5 team finding their stride after a play-in.

As a mid-major Stan -- in a perfect world, I'd actually give all 4 of the Byes to the Mid-Majors. Let 2 Power 5 teams face-off in the Tuesday game, winner advances to play the mid-major. Then all 4 of those games are between a Power 5 and a Mid-Major with the winner advancing to the Tournament. Cinema.

So if the NCAA is actually as greedy as I, and everyone else thinks they are -- this is absolutely a plan they should be implementing. The viewership, marketing, ticket sales, concessions, etc -- all of it absolutely sky-rockets if every play-in game is one people actually care about. And they'd find it a whole lot easier to justify this horseshit expansion plan with the fans of their sport.

That's my pitch -- and if anyone at the NCAA is reading this and gets some inspiration to fix their fucking sport and make more money in the process -- my name's Luke Loewenstein, and I expect a job with $250K base salary, benefits, and 1% of all revenue as my cut.

You're welcome, Pigs.