The NCAA men’s basketball tournament comes to a head on Monday night in Indianapolis when Michigan takes on UConn. But as the national title is slated to be decided, tournament expansion looms for those within the college sports industry.
“We were told by the basketball committees to stop talking about that,” NCAA President Charlie Baker said on Saturday night, tongue-in-cheek. “So after the tournament -- which I think is a really good policy because we’ve got really great things going on in Phoenix and here. Let’s play the games and then we can talk about that.”
Tournament expansion has been seen as a “when,” not “if,” by plenty within college basketball circles, while the expectation is the coming weeks may well see it grow to 76 teams. That said, there are complications. For one, the merger between Paramount and Warner Bros. Discovery creates a power vacuum between TNT Sports and CBS Sports, not least of which includes deciding who would actually run a joint organization.
There’s also a matter of sorting through the quirkiness around the way the NCAA corporate partnership program is set up, in which companies essentially buy access to all of its championships instead of being able to go after one offs. Could expansion change that? Perhaps, though to what degree remains to be seen.
