NCAA Announces Expansion of Men's and Women's Basketball Tournaments to 76 Teams Starting in 2027
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The NCAA announced expansion of the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments on Thursday, swelling the annual March brackets to a pointlessly bloated 76 teams each, set to begin in 2027. It takes the concept of the “First Four,” which was adopted in 2011, and expands it by another eight teams to have six games take place ahead of the true first round — rather than two. No one wanted this, and yet we’re getting it anyway.
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CBS SportsGiven how polarizing expansion of any kind is, the move to 76 is expected to be the long-term format, sources said. The tournament stood at 68 teams the past 15 years and was at 64/65 participants dating back to 1985. That's 41 years at mostly the same size — the most popular era for the NCAA Tournament, to boot. With that in mind, going to 76 is a major stress test on the three days after Selection Sunday. From a logistics standpoint, going beyond 76 teams one day in the future might require disassembling the sport's calendar — and the cadence of the tournament — in order to fit in more teams and games.
Yahoo SportsThe NCAA tournament is going to have a new look and feel in 2027. The NCAA, and its various committees, agreed Thursday to expand both the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments from 68 teams to 76 teams.
Fox SportsThe new 76-team brackets will jam eight extra games — for a total of 12 games involving 24 teams — into the front half of the first week of the men's and the women's tournaments, turning what’s now known as the First Four into a bigger affair. It is the first expansion of the tournaments in 15 years, when they were bumped to 68 teams each.
Bleacher ReportThe NCAA Division I men's and women's tournaments are expanding to 76 teams following a vote on Thursday.
ESPNThe men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments are expanding to 76 teams, the NCAA announced Thursday.
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The move is a product of the times, which includes massive expansion — the Atlantic Coast Conference, for instance, has grown from nine to 17 teams since 1996 — and the reality that mid-major schools with top-notch players will often see them plucked away by programs with bigger budgets and the ability to pay them through revenue sharing.
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Fox SportsThe move is a product of the times, which include massive expansion — the ACC, for instance, has grown from nine to 17 teams since 1996 — and the reality that mid-major schools with top-notch players will often see those players plucked away by programs with bigger budgets and the ability to pay them through revenue sharing.
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One reason this took as long as it did was the NCAA negotiations with CBS and TNT, which themselves have been in negotiations over their own ownership.
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Yahoo SportsOne of reason this took as long as it did was the NCAA negotiations with CBS and TNT, which themselves have been in negotiations over their own ownership.
4 details only one outlet reported
Independent claims that didn't surface elsewhere in our corpus. Treat as supplementary — not corroborated across outlets.
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01 ESPN Currently, if a 5-7 team needs to be selected to participate, those teams become available as alternates in descending order of their multiyear APR.
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02 SB Nation Gavitt comically attempted to downplay the amount of money the NCAA is bringing in from the tournaments by attempting to explain how expensive it is to host March Madness.
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03 CBS Sports The CFP will remain a 12-team field in 2026. "The room is open," CFP executive director Rich Clark said earlier this month. "Pretty much every commissioner in there has indicated that. We know that some of them probably lean more towards one format than another, but they want the truth. They want the facts so that they make a good decision."
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04 Yahoo Sports And in case you were still confused and needed even more of an explanation for how the new tournament format will work, the NCAA put out a video in which Andy Katz laid it all out.
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