March Madness bracket expansion would add value, could be decided soon, Baker says

NCAA President Charlie Baker sees value in expanding the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament by a handful of teams and wants to reach a decision on the matter in the next few months, he said Thursday.

Baker spoke during Big 12 spring meetings, where conference leaders are discussing everything from the multibillion dollar revenue-sharing settlement to complexities brought on by the transfer portal and name, image and likeness.

“We’ve had good conversations with CBS and WBD,” Baker said about adding four to eight teams. “Our goal here is to try to sort of get to either yes or no sometime in the next few months because there’s a lot of logistical work that would be associated with doing this. If we were to go down this road, you just think about the opening weekends, who has to travel the longest, it gets complicated.”

The NCAA Tournament expanded from 64 to 68 teams in 2011. The change introduced the First Four round, a set of pre-tournament games where the two lowest-seeded at-large teams and two lowest-seeded conference champions compete for a spot in the traditional 64-team bracket.

Baker said there are flaws in the current formula and it would be beneficial to give more opportunities to worthy teams.

“If you have a tournament that’s got 64 or 68 teams in it, you’re going to have a bunch of teams that are probably among what most people would consider to be the best 68 or 70 teams in the country that aren’t going to make the tournament, period,” Baker said. “The point behind going from 68 to 72 or 76 is to basically give some of those schools that were probably among the 72, 76, 68, 64 best teams in the country a way into the tournament.”