EXPAND OR STAND PAT?
NCAA facing dilemma about increasing tourney field as TV ratings soar
For both the men’s and women’s NCAA tournaments will add even more fuel to the roiling debate within college athletics about whether to expand the postseason.
On one side, proponents will see opportunity to squeeze even more revenue out of an event that seems to grow and grow regardless of the chaos currently engulfing the administrative side of college athletics.
On the other, some influential voices in the sport see what’s going on this March and wonder why the NCAA should mess with a good thing at all.
“Let’s slow down a little bit here,” one of them told USA Today sports, speaking on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity around these discussions. “Why rush into changing the tournament? We can afford to let this play out.”
The expansion push, largely coming from power conference commissioners who have concerns about tournament access as their leagues become 16- or 18-team behemoths next year, is going to remain a dominant storyline until the NCAA makes a decision.
But the emotional heat around that issue will completely overshadow the more important questions college administrators should be asking themselves: How can the massive public interest in the tournament boost the core product they offer during the regular season? And how would an expansion of the tournament figure into the larger strategy of bringing college basketball back into the mainstream?
Here’s what we know: The best of college basketball is about as good as it gets in sports, and there’s a huge audience for it at the highest level.
Nielsen said 15.1 million people watched North Carolina State defeat Duke in the men’s Elite Eight, the largest number for any Easter Sunday telecast since 2013. Overall, the men’s tournament is averaging 9.4 million viewers across the four networks
that broadcast it, about a 4% increase from last year’s event.
On the women’s side, Caitlin Clark is fueling record-breaking viewership with an incredible 12.3 million viewers on ESPN for Iowa-LSU. While that number may not be repeatable once Clark leaves college, growth in viewership for the women’s tournament has been clear for a few years.
These are all trends the NCAA and television networks will monitor as it approaches the end of its eight-year, $8.8 billion contract extension with CBS and Turner for the men’s event that runs through 2032. In retrospect, that deal is now seen as one of the biggest unforced errors of former NCAA president Mark Emmert’s tenure, as the association would have likely stood to make billions more had he taken it to market.
The broadcast rights for the women’s tournament, negotiated last year by current president Charlie Baker, will also expire in 2032, giving the NCAA some flexibility for how to maximize revenue from its two marquee events.
But that’s still a long way off. Given the current environment in college sports with consolidation of the major conferences and potential for athletes to be paid as employees, it’s hard to know what the pre-eminent postseason basketball tournaments will look like.
With such an uncertain future hovering over this entire conversation, what’s actually in the best interests of the major schools would be a more holistic look at growing college basketball and less focus on changing the structure of a three-week tournament that already delivers incredible results.
If the NCAA Tournament means everything to this sport, its appeal must be protected — not risked on a lark because the SEC and Big Ten want more spots to themselves.