Report: NCAA to Expand Women's Basketball Tournament, Add First Four
Fans of March Madness could be getting an extra dose of hoops from now on.
According to a report from Athlon Sports' Bryan Fischer, the NCAA is in the process of expanding the Division I Women's Basketball Tournament from 64 to 68 teams, something they did for the Men's Basketball Tournament back in 2011. The decision follows an offseason that has exposed the governing body for not properly valuing women's basketball and its postseason in recent years.
The Women’s Basketball Oversight Committee provided a guideline of priorities for how to better approach the sport on a national level in June, and one of the recommendations that came from the committee's meetings was an expanded tournament field.
An independent gender equity review of the NCAA was completed in August, and it concluded that the NCAA had been prioritizing men's basketball "over everything else in ways that create, normalize and perpetuate gender inequities." The report projected the women's tournament to be worth between $81 million and $112 million annually by 2025, despite being part of a media deal with ESPN that pays out just $34 million a year.
The conversation picked up steam in March when Oregon's Sedona Prince shared a viral video of the training facilities in the women's tournament bubble in San Antonio, which paled in compared to the ones available to the men in Indianapolis. Reports also surfaced about the NCAA barring the women's tournament from capitalizing off of and utilizing any March Madness branding.
Allowing the women's tournament access to "March Madness" was another recommendation from both the Women’s Basketball Oversight Committee and the gender equity review.
Expanding the tournament by four teams would add four additional games prior to the Round of 64. UCLA men's basketball made it into the NCAA tournament via this route in both 2018 and 2021, winning its First Four matchup and going all the way to the Final Four as a No. 11 seed in the most recent March Madness.
UCLA women's basketball has made it into the NCAA tournament outright five times in a row, but considering the Bruins and their conference foe Arizona won the WNIT in 2015 and 2019, there could certainly be implications to expanding March Madness that would work in the Pac-12's favor.
Other recommendations made by the Women’s Basketball Oversight Committee and independent gender equity report, such as holding the men's and women's Final Fours in the same city, have yet to be addressed.
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