The NCAA's plans to expand the March Madness tournament to 72 or even 76 teams by 2027 may be a mistake, former Duke's men's basketball coach Mike Krzyzewski has said. For Krzyzewski, the tournament is perfect as it is, with 68 teams competing in the men's and women's events.
When the change was made to bump up to 68 teams for the men in 2011 and the women in 2022, the goal was to keep the tournament exciting. Anyone who has attended any round of a March Madness tournament knows that excitement is an understatement: the events are thrilling.
“I don’t think you mess with something that is gold. It’s gold. The thing you should mess with is getting a leadership group and having them study and see what happens with that group,” Krzyzewski, who won five national championships with Duke, said to Jeff Goodman in an interview for “Field of 68.”
The coach also appeared to imply that there may be more than good basketball behind the proposed switch. “It’s not just one person, but actually, they should run it like the NBA and have a staff and all that, and run it like a business. But I wouldn’t mess with gold right now, and the NCAA tournament is certainly that,” Krzyzewski added.
Other people have also spoken out against tournament expansion — for it
Goodman also took issue with the idea of expansion, and hinted that some of teams on the bubble simply don't deserve to make it in the first place. “Imagine thinking you want to expand the NCAA tournament after really studying the resumes of most of these bubble teams,” Goodman wrote on X.
Of course, there are also people who have argued in favor of tournament expansion. As much as some may argue that teams on the bubble are there for a reason, others have pointed out that sometimes a bubble team can surprise everyone and knock out a guarantee contender — and that's only more exciting for the game.
There are also other factors that could make tournament expansion more difficult. Not every program has the same resources, and not every program would be able to find planes to get athletes to games across the country on short notice.
Paying for an extended tournament appears to be a roadblock
While NCAA president Charlie Baker has said at times that paying for the expansion wouldn't be a problem, he's also hinted at the logistics surrounding expansion are ultimately what's standing in the way. That could include paying for it and the aforementioned transportation issues.