Why March Madness expansion is really happening: NCAA unnecessarily folded to a bluff from power conferences

March Madness is going to expand because of soft threats and endless greed from the power conferences, Matt Norlander argues

Matt Norlander

Apr 29, 2026

5:51 pm ET

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10 min read

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The NCAA Tournament is a beloved American institution because of its routinely reliable penchant for dramatic moments.

On Tuesday, it provided another, albeit one that was hardly shocking. Although the men's and women's basketball tournaments have not yet materially expanded from 68 to 76 teams, the decision at this point is considered a mere formality. Various committees will soon convene, and then in May, the press releases will be sent and all will be made official. Against the will and want of the majority of sports fans, a once-perfect event will again be adulterated. From 64 to 65 to 68 to — now it's really gonna look weird — 76.

But before we get to that point, oh look, there's an elephant in this room to address.

There are two reasons, and only two reasons, why expansion is going to happen. The first is obvious: money. Now, it's not a lot of money. Not yet, anyway. Sources told CBS Sports that expansion to 76 will not, in the short-term, bring in significant profits vs. what the NCAA and conferences were previously receiving. They are not readying to pop bottles of champagne at NCAA headquarters over a newfound profit bonanza. Keep in mind it took four years for the NCAA to finally make expansion doable because of how expensive it is to stage two tournaments with 136 teams at dozens of sites.

Now it will be 152 (!) teams at even more sites with even more logistical challenges across the board.

As one commissioner told me on this topic in years prior: "One of the main sticking points is that without more revenue, how do you pay for more games? How do you pay for more travel? How do you pay for more expenses of an expanded tournament? And on the flip side of it, if you expand, you're devaluing basketball units at that point. Without more revenue it creates more problems."

Another commissioner previously told CBS Sports: "They're not getting a ton of money, there's no pot of gold, there's no additional money from ESPN with expansion of the women's tournament."

Will it be worth it? Probably not. But the money will make it easier to justify.

Winners and Losers of NCAA Tournament Expansion: Who benefits or suffers in new 76-team March Madness bracket

David Cobb

NCAA Transformation Committee laid the groundwork

The other reason expansion is coming is the Big Reason, perhaps better framed as The Unspoken Threat. It's the lurking worry that's hovered at every committee meeting and on every Zoom call in which this topic has been discussed over the past three-plus years.

To know why the NCAA is going to go through with this, it's crucial to go back to why expansion became a topic altogether. Who asked for this? When did this ball get rolling? Well, in 2021 then-NCAA president Mark Emmert and others lobbied for a "Transformation Committee" in Division I to look at every issue affecting high-level college sports. The committee was formed after the NCAA took a lashing in the watershed Alston case, which infamously ended with a 9-0 Supreme Court ruling against the NCAA.

That transformation committee had two chairs: SEC commissioner Greg Sankey and then-Ohio athletic director Julie Cromer (who is now a colleague of Sankey's in the SEC, as she's the No. 2 in LSU's athletic department). Less than a year after it formed, the committee recommended that every Division I sport with at least 200 teams should seriously explore expanding its championship events.

The lede to my story on Oct. 5, 2022 read: "Should the NCAA Tournaments in men's and women's basketball ever expand again, the Division I Transformation Committee will be remembered as the catalyst."

Those recommendations didn't only come from the Transformation Committee. Power-conference commissioners were priming the pump for years. These are the same leagues, with many of the same primary actors, who at that point were also in the midst of expanding their own conferences in an effort to make as much money as possible because of football.

In 2022, one power-conference commissioner gave me this quote on background, and it's downright spooky how accurate these 19 words became: "By 2026 college football is going to look very different and it's going to trickle down to other sports."

That's why we're here.

Power conferences flexed their muscles

In the early 2020s the SEC and Big 12 expanded to 16 teams. The ACC and Big Ten bloated to 18 schools each. They redefined the landscape of the NCAA and then used the blood of the old Pac-12 to draw the lines and borders on the new map of college athletics.

Even then, with their superconferences and mega-rich media deals, the commissioners, university presidents and athletic directors at