The NCAA men's basketball tournament is on the verge of expanding next season - just not by as much as anticipated.
The NCAA announced Thursday it had reached a 14-year, $10.8 billion agreement with CBS and Turner Broadcasting for a television deal that will allow every tournament game to be broadcast live for the first time. The new deal coincided with the NCAA's announcement the same day that it was increasing the tournament field by three teams, from 65 to 68.
The proposed expansion doesn't stretch the field nearly as far as the 96-team proposal discussed just three weeks ago at the Final Four. The expansion still needs to be reviewed by the NCAA's board of directors on April 29, and there is still room in the new TV contract to accommodate further expansion in the future.
However, acting NCAA president Jim Isch said Thursday that given the men's basketball committee's recommendation of a 68-team field, that's "probably where we will be ... for now."
A new tournament bracket including three additional teams will need to be approved by the Division I men's basketball committee, which has two meetings scheduled during the next two months. One scenario could have four games pitting Nos. 16 and 17 seeds, with the winners facing the No. 1 seed in each region.
Whatever the final matchups, the more limited expansion proposal received positive reviews locally.
N.C. State heads into next season hoping to end a four-season NCAA tournament drought, and Wolfpack coach Sidney Lowe applauded Thursday's news.
"I obviously think this is a good move by the NCAA," Lowe said in a prepared statement. "Adding more teams to the field gives more teams an opportunity. The tournament is already perhaps the most exciting time of year, and now adding more teams you get more opportunities for upsets. It has the potential to add more drama to an event that all of college basketball tunes into during those few weeks."
UNC coach Roy Williams, whose program followed up its 2009 NCAA title with an NIT postseason run this spring, had been on the fence about expansion but expressed happiness that it was limited under Thursday's proposal.
"I am pleased to hear what the NCAA has decided, although I do not know the details," Williams said in a prepared statement. "I really was torn myself with what to do, so taking the field to 68 seems like a good step. This will give them time to decide if this is just an intermediate step to a larger event or not. There are so many good teams, and adding three more helps get some of them in the bracket without tarnishing the specialness of the tournament."
In recent weeks, adding 31 teams had appeared close to a done deal. During the Final Four in Indianapolis, NCAA vice president Greg Shaheen talked extensively about the plans to go to 96 teams, saying more games would have to be added to the second week of the three-week event and that the play-in game would be eliminated.
Earlier this week, Miami professor Clyde B. McCoy, president of the ACC's faculty representatives, said his group was against expanding to 96 teams because of the increase in missed class time and other academic problems resulting from squeezing more games into a three-week tournament.
ACC athletic directors also had expressed concern that expanding the field so dramatically would devalue the regular season and league tournament.
Shaheen Thursday, though, that nothing had ever been decided - and that the NCAA had been looking at all options.
"Ultimately, what we're able to do through this agreement is have the kind of partnership that we look for with the overall objectives that the association desires - and a field size that makes sense relative to where the championship currently is," Shaheen said
Expanding the field to 68 allows the tournament to maintain what ACC commissioner John Swofford called "a similar and popular structure."
"It also protects the regular season and conference tournaments which are particularly important to the ACC, as well as other conferences and their individual institutions," he added in a prepared statement
N.C. State athletic director Lee Fowler said he liked the move to 68 because "a smaller leap is better, to see how it goes."
The more modest expansion also preserves the NCAA-run National Invitation Tournament, whose 32 berths likely would have been folded into a 96-team NCAA field. The NCAA's new agreement with CBS and Turner runs from 2011 through 2024. It means that every game next March will be shown live on CBS, TBS, TNT or truTV. The men's tournament last expanded in 2001, when one team was added to the 64-team field that was set in 1985.
"For college basketball specifically, the value of the tournament has never been greater, which is a testament to the strength of the sport," Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said in a prepared statement. "With the addition of three more teams to the field, the basic structure of the tournament will not be impacted significantly in the foreseeable future. As a coach, I am very pleased with this result and look forward to working with the NCAA and its television partners in the years ahead."
