This March, 18.7 percent of Division I’s 363 men’s basketball teams will participate in the NCAA Tournament. At least one influential group of college athletics leaders is trying to raise that number in the years ahead.
The NCAA Division I Transformation Committee, after a year-long effort to modernize and decentralize collegiate sports, submitted its final official recommendations to the D-I Board of Directors last month. Most notably, the committee advised that all team sports sponsored by more than 200 institutions consider expanding their postseason fields to 25 percent of the teams that meet the standard in the sport — clearing the way for sports such as basketball to expand their postseasons, if desired.
The proposal’s math for basketball isn’t difficult to do: Twenty-five percent of 363 D-I teams means a tournament of about 90. Final decisions on changes to the size of each sport’s bracket will need to be decided by January 2024 for implementation in the 2024-25 academic year.
Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior vice president for basketball, told The Athletic that he expects the Men’s and Women’s Basketball Committees to take up the topic this spring and summer, after the conclusion of their respective tournaments. (Alternatively, the task may fall to the…
