Is NCAA tournament expanding in 2025? Exploring potential moves after Charlie Baker's recent comments

The issue of the NCAA Tournament expansion has hogged headlines since last year when the proposal was tabled by the basketball committee in June. The idea has gained traction and has garnered widespread debate about its viability among fans and analysts.

During the Big 12 meetings last week, NCAA president Charlie Baker confirmed that the governing authority was exploring an expansion plan slated for as soon as next year.

“That would be the goal — to try and do this for next year,” Charlie Baker said. “We’ve had good conversations with CBS and WBD. Our goal here is to try to either get to 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. So, the point behind going from 68 to 72 or 76 is to basically give some of those schools that probably were among the … best teams in the country a way into the tournament.”

Charlie Baker's latest comments suggest that the NCAA Tournament expansion is on the fast track and will happen in time for next year's edition.

NCAA Tournament expansion plan explained

The NCAA Tournament had 65 teams until 2011 when it expanded to a 68-team field which introduced the first round which pits the four lowest-seeded teams and conference champions against each other ahead of the second round.

During the Big 12 spring meetings, NCAA president Charlie Baker revealed the rationale behind the expansion push that has been championed by, among others, the expansionist Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark.

"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."

The NCAA Tournament expansion push has also gotten the support of influential coaches like Kansas Jayhawks' Bill Self who pointed to the Big 12 only having seven bids, way behind the SEC's 14 bids during the 2025 Big Dance as a motivating factor.