NCAA President Charlie Baker Addresses Tournament Expansion With 2026 Events Looming

Baker, a supporter of expansion, tells Sports Illustrated that it’s a “good question” whether the 2026 tournaments will be the final events with 68 teams.

NCAA president Charlie Baker is a staunch supporter of tournament expansion for both men’s and women’s basketball. | Michelle Pemberton/IndyStar / USA TODAY NETWORK

NCAA president Charlie Baker tells Sports Illustrated Tuesday that it’s “a good question” whether the upcoming 2026 NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments will be the final events to contain 68 teams.

“We’re certainly working to see if we can make it 72 or 76,” Baker says, referencing the must-discussed potential addition of four to eight teams for 2027 and beyond. He added that no firm decisions have been made.

Baker is in favor of expansion. The former Harvard basketball player noted that the size of the tournament field during his playing days in the 1970s moved from 22 to 32 teams, with seven additional expansions between 1979 and 2011 to the current field of 68. Each expansion encountered some level of resistance.

“Everyone thought the world was going to come to an end,” Baker says. “And it didn’t.”

There are widespread assertions that the potential extra bids will simply reward mid-tier or lower-tier teams from power conferences. Baker says he’s not convinced that will be the case.

“I will want to see who gets those seeds,” he says. “Who gets those slots?”

In recent years the NCAA has released a list of the “first four out” of the bracket—the teams that would, in theory, be the first beneficiaries of an expanded bracket. In both 2024 and ’25, three of the four teams on the wrong side of the bubble were from power conferences. In 2023, all four of those teams came from power leagues.

The eight teams just outside the field of 68 in the current Sports Illustrated Bracket Watch include five from power conferences and three from outside those leagues. The power-conference teams: Miami and Virginia Tech of the Atlantic Coast Conference; Ohio State from the Big Ten; Missouri from the Southeastern Conference; and Oklahoma State from the Big 12. The other teams are George Mason and VCU of the Atlantic-10 and Santa Clara of the West Coast Conference.

Current ESPN bracket projections from Joe Lunardi (men’s tournament) and Charlie Creme (women’s tournament) have the same breakdown for seeds 69 to 76 men (five from power leagues, three not) and a 6-to-2 power/non-power split for women.

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