2026 NCAA Tournament

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Roland Brooks said:
I am hearing 72 teams next year. I guess it would be The First 8. Dayton would host four teams and another site TBD would get four teams.. maybe the second location is out west.
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I wouldn’t be opposed to adding 4 teams to get to 72 but I hope they stop there and don’t ruin a good thing.
 

Roland Brooks said:
I am hearing 72 teams next year. I guess it would be The First 8. Dayton would host four teams and another site TBD would get four teams.. maybe the second location is out west.
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The odds those 4 extra teams are from Power 5 conferences?

It was inevitable, but thought it might be another year or two.
 




Medved will have us “settled” into a six seed no doubt.
 


This to me is way worse for the game than NIL. I hate 68 with every fiber of my body and 72 96 128 whatever will be worse. I hate rewarding mediocrity. Hey UNC 1-11 vs top 100, you're in! Make it mean something to make the tournament.
 

leib0039 said:
This to me is way worse for the game than NIL. I hate 68 with every fiber of my body and 72 96 128 whatever will be worse. I hate rewarding mediocrity. Hey UNC 1-11 vs top 100, you're in! Make it mean something to make the tournament.
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Agree.
IMO go back to 64 teams and also get rid of the conf tourneys.
The conf tourneys are overkill. Perfect storm is regular season and go right into the Dance.
Sometimes less is more.
 
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leib0039 said:
This to me is way worse for the game than NIL. I hate 68 with every fiber of my body and 72 96 128 whatever will be worse. I hate rewarding mediocrity. Hey UNC 1-11 vs top 100, you're in! Make it mean something to make the tournament.
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It’s like a 6-6 team in a bowl game!
 






Just foolishness. Not even diehards are going to watch 6 straight days of basketball and casual fans will be far less inclined to do brackets with this mess.
 

Go back to 64 teams, the "play in" games aren't truly play in games. A true play in game are teams on the fringe of making the tournament, not automatic qualifiers. If your team won their conference, Dayton should not be an option. Matter of fact, take out of conference tournaments too, if you win the regular season, that's enough.
 

Roland Brooks said:
I am hearing 72 teams next year. I guess it would be The First 8. Dayton would host four teams and another site TBD would get four teams.. maybe the second location is out west.
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The NCAA will just dump all the lower conference champions there instead of them playing in the main event. Dayton is not the main event.
 

Gilthorp57 said:
Go back to 64 teams, the "play in" games aren't truly play in games. A true play in game are teams on the fringe of making the tournament, not automatic qualifiers. If your team won their conference, Dayton should not be an option. Matter of fact, take out of conference tournaments too, if you win the regular season, that's enough.
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Friendly amendment. Let the smaller, mostly one bid leagues, keep their tournaments and determine independently how they select their rep. Smaller conference tournaments provide some of the more exciting games in March madness. Giving it to the regular season champion is just, but it certainly deprives us of a lot of good games. I think the NCAA, regardless of the number of teams, is going to get less competitive until the sweet 16.
 

Gilthorp57 said:
Go back to 64 teams, the "play in" games aren't truly play in games. A true play in game are teams on the fringe of making the tournament, not automatic qualifiers. If your team won their conference, Dayton should not be an option. Matter of fact, take out of conference tournaments too, if you win the regular season, that's enough.
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That's completely up to the conferences. They get to choose how their automatic qualifier is determined, the regular season champion or tournament champion. If they want to ensure their best team plays in the NCAA Tournament, they could send the regular season champ.
 

SelectionSunday said:
That's completely up to the conferences. They get to choose how their automatic qualifier is determined, the regular season champion or tournament champion. If they want to ensure their best team plays in the NCAA Tournament, they could send the regular season champ.
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The automatic bid incentive from the conference tournament champion probably gets more eyeballs on those tournaments, but I would prefer the regular season champion gets the automatic bid. Maybe make the conference tournament champion get an automatic bid to one of the other postseason tournaments if not already eligible.
 

golfing18now said:
The automatic bid incentive from the conference tournament champion probably gets more eyeballs on those tournaments, but I would prefer the regular season champion gets the automatic bid. Maybe make the conference tournament champion get an automatic bid to one of the other postseason tournaments if not already eligible.
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Agree, regular season champs would be better, but I'm guessing the smaller conferences don't want to give up the money ESPN (or whatever network) is paying them to broadcast the tournament.
 

I feel like the NCAA jumped the shark when they expanded to 68, so expanding the opening round another 4 doesn't bother me as much and seemed inevitable...but I do agree with prior comment about North Carolina getting a bid this past season as example of it really getting underwhelming for at-large quality.
 

Add 4 more and I'm done with brackets forever. Add 8 more and I'm done watching it.
 

Roland Brooks said:
I am hearing 72 teams next year. I guess it would be The First 8. Dayton would host four teams and another site TBD would get four teams.. maybe the second location is out west.
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Where are you hearing this? Any links? Shooter's Birdie? Local coffee shop?

Go Gophers!!
 


to those saying scrap the conf tourney, i really enjoy the excitement of making a run and you can get in. Cardiac Kemba will live forever because of this and they likely miss the tourney all together without the conf tourney run. If it means you have tough calls on autobids versus regular season champs in mid tier leagues, that's fine but that's part of the mystique of the tournament to me (and personally I'd rather see 2 teams from the small conference rather than UNC make the tournament; that's more a selection committee issue). Adding more teams that inevitably just adds more mid-pack .500 or lower in conference teams from the SEC, B10, etc is just dumb.

No one is asking for 72 other than the TV execs who make money and major conferences who think it'll get them more teams in more consistently and thus a bigger payout.
 

They should go back to 64 and then put some weight into combining the NIT/"Crown" into a 32 team tournament people might actually watch.
 


leib0039 said:
This to me is way worse for the game than NIL. I hate 68 with every fiber of my body and 72 96 128 whatever will be worse. I hate rewarding mediocrity. Hey UNC 1-11 vs top 100, you're in! Make it mean something to make the tournament.
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NIL certainly is going to have a bigger impact on the tournament. It drastically limited the chances for a Cinderella. This is just going to water down the lead up. I'm opposed to it, but I think the impact will be similar to the play-in.

It's biggest impact is that I'm going to forget about these games and forget to turn in my bracket.
 

leib0039 said:
This to me is way worse for the game than NIL. I hate 68 with every fiber of my body and 72 96 128 whatever will be worse. I hate rewarding mediocrity. Hey UNC 1-11 vs top 100, you're in! Make it mean something to make the tournament.
Click to expand...
They are not rewarding medocrity. There are waaaay more good teams in college basketball now than there were even 10 years ago. (Last year MN was mediocre and didn't get in.) The money and loose transfer rules have raised the floor AND raised the ceiling on the best of the best. Don't even get me going on the UNC thing. I disagree with ur reasoning, which is fine. Not rabid about it though.
 

SomeGopherFan said:
I feel like the NCAA jumped the shark when they expanded to 68, so expanding the opening round another 4 doesn't bother me as much and seemed inevitable...but I do agree with prior comment about North Carolina getting a bid this past season as example of it really getting underwhelming for at-large quality.
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Next time they're jumping the shark wearing a leather jacket. The time after that, they'll be naked. Seriously, they think of shark jumping as a good thing. "Hey, look at me! I'm jumping over a shark!" in Ralph Wiggum voice. They don't conceive of how stupid and greedy they look.
 

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