ACC commissioner Jim Phillips said Wednesday that “it’s time to look at” expanding the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments, the latest major sign of a rapidly shifting college athletics landscape.
“The time is now,” Phillips, a member of the NCAA Division I Transformation Committee, said during the ACC’s annual preseason basketball event. “The time is now as we’re looking at the overall structure of the NCAA, and one of their responsibilities has been championships. So I’m in favor of looking at it, and I really would like us to expand.”
Phillips’ comments seemingly echo those of SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, who co-chairs the Transformation Committee and said earlier this summer he was amenable to taking a “fresh look” at the makeup and entry requirements for the NCAA Tournament. Both the men’s and women’s NCAA Tournaments currently feature 68 teams, including automatic qualifying bids for the 32 conference champions.
Phillips stressed that he is “not interested in cutting back those AQs,” but rather expanding the at-large field for programs investing substantial resources in their respective programs.
“Those AQs matter,” Phillips added. “That’s part of the broad-based opportunities we have in Division I sports, the lower resource conferences and the higher resource conferences can all gain access.”
While the transformation committee is considering several wide-sweeping changes to the current college athletics model — including anticipated recommendations regarding the governance structure as well as championship access for all NCAA-sponsored sports — Phillips’ comments are notable because the NCAA men’s basketball tournament remains the chief revenue-generator for college athletics’ governing body. It allows most Division I athletic departments to operate as such.
In response to Phillips’ comments, several ACC men’s basketball coaches expressed a similar willingness to explore expanding the postseason. Jim Larrañaga, Miami’s men’s basketball coach, said he was in favor of a 96-team field, including automatic byes for each of the league’s conference tournament champions. Virginia’s Tony Bennett and Syracuse’s Jim Boeheim — the only two active ACC men’s coaches who have won national championships — also indicated their support broadly. But there are logistical challenges with any expansion model, including those that would require an additional weekend of games, and others that would see first- and second-round sites simply accommodate more games.
“Maybe add a weekend. Maybe there’s first-round byes for teams that are ranked at a certain level or seeded at a certain level. It’s a Rubik’s Cube times two,” Phillips said. “But the ability to increase a championship can happen. It can happen. There will be a lot of work that needs to be done. It has to be done thoughtfully. We need to make sure we’re listening to the membership.”
The Transformation Committee is currently socializing a concept that could increase access to NCAA championships for sports in which under 25 percent of the sport participates in the postseason event. It’s still early in the process and not a formal recommendation, but it’s a way that such events could both increase at-large selections but also keep AQ access for lesser-resourced leagues. At-large bids are important to the Power 5 leagues, and bigger brackets would allow increased access without adjusting AQs directly (which would be a more complicated process to change, legislatively).
“I saw what came out of the (Division I) Council last week, about maybe the guidelines should be 25 percent,” Phillips said. “I don’t know that we can reach that in every sport, but I think the closer we can get to that number is best for student-athletes.”
(Photo: Matt Cashore / USA Today)
