Expansion is officially coming to March Madness. On Thursday, the NCAA announced that the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments will increase from 68 teams to 76 beginning in 2027. The opening round will now feature 12 games, up from four under the previous format. Nothing else will change once the field is whittled down to 64 teams.

While the new bracket will still include all 32 automatic qualifiers (up one from 2026 with a re-imagined Pac-12 back in the fold), the 12 lowest-seeded auto bids — every 16-seed and two pairs of 15-seeds — will be sent to play-in games. The traditional “last four in” as well as eight additional teams in the expanded tournament will also take part in the opening round.

According to the NCAA, expansion will create “more championship access for student-athletes.”

“More teams will hear their names called on Selection Sunday. More student-athletes will experience the stage that defines college basketball. More schools will benefit from the national exposure that comes with playing in an NCAA tournament. And fans will get more March Madness without losing the opening-weekend format that has long made the tournament one of the most popular events in sports,” the release said.

However, Geno Auriemma doesn’t buy it.

“I don't think there were 68 teams that deserved to be in (the NCAA Tournament this past year),” he said last Monday. “To me, this is strictly a money grab for the Power Four conferences to get teams that finished 6-10 in their conference to get into the tournament.”

Despite what the NCAA says, the motivation is financial. During the tournament, revenue units are paid out to conferences for every game a member school plays. On the women’s side, each unit is worth $113,636, so UConn (five games) and Villanova (one game) generated $681,816 for the Big East this past March.

The more teams a league gets in, the more money it makes. The NCAA says an additional $131 million will be awarded to schools.

In that regard, the new bracket will benefit low-major conferences. All 16-seeds and half the 15-seeds will have a legitimate chance to win a game (and with it, earn an additional unit) before being sacrificed to the top-seeded teams.

“Some people have said that those play-in games, or these other teams that get in, financially, it benefits them,” Auriemma started. “Only if you give it to the teams that need the money from that tournament.”

That’s not the only financial factor, either. While the NCAA has long banned advertising and sponsorships related to alcohol, it recently reversed course and is now set to allow them in 2027. More games mean more commercials, many of which are expected to be gobbled up by beer, wine and hard liquor companies.

“I would say that expansion would not have happened without that (alcohol) agreement,” Dan Gavitt, the NCAA’s senior VP of basketball, said.

Another argument in favor of expanding the tournament is increased access for mid-majors. Seton Hall’s Tony Bozzella has been particularly vocal in his support for a larger field while every single conference voted in favor of the new format.

If the 2026 women’s basketball tournament included 76 teams, the last eight in would’ve been BYU, North Dakota State, Utah, Texas A&M, Mississippi State, Stanford, Kansas and Indiana. Seven of those schools come from power conferences.

The previous two years would’ve been better for mid-majors. James Madison and St. Joseph’s were among the first four out in 2025, while James Madison, Villanova and Washington State just missed the cut in 2024.

Auriemma would support NCAA Tournament expansion if it guaranteed more spots for mid-majors. He just doesn’t believe that’ll be the case.

“The fact that Miami of Ohio (men’s basketball) had to struggle to get into the tournament (despite a 31-1 record on Selection Sunday), that's what's wrong with the tournament, not that there's not enough teams in it,” he said. “What's wrong is that these really good teams that have great seasons deserve to be in it.”

“If that's not the plan to let more [mid-majors] in, then it doesn't make any difference. And that’s not the plan,” he said. “Because this kind of is the prequel to there being 86 or 88 or 92 teams in the tournament, and they all come from four conferences. Or the way it's going now, maybe there's only 64 teams, and they come from two conferences. I don’t know.”

The women’s basketball tournament most recently expanded in 2022, when it added the First Four by increasing from 64 teams to 68. The 64-team bracket was introduced back in 1994, the year before UConn won its first national championship. The women’s tournament previously featured 32 teams in 1982, jumped to 36 teams in 1983, then fell back to 32 for 1984 and 1985. It grew to 40 teams in 1986 then again to 48 teams in 1989.

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