John Calipari on tournament expansion: 'Leave that unknown alone'

Earlier this month, Yahoo! Sports‘ Ross Dellenger reported a 76-team NCAA Tournament is growing closer to becoming a reality. At SEC Media Days on Tuesday, Arkansas head coach John Calipari weighed in on the notion of expanding the NCAA Tournament.

“I just think you leave it how it is because if it’s not broken, go with the known, leave that unknown alone,” Calipari said. “We don’t know what will happen to it. I don’t, and I’m not worried about money or anything else.

“I still don’t know what all this transfer stuff and all the eligibility stuff’s going to do… They could have a mid-major team that’s average age is 26. They’re pretty good. And all of a sudden they get to advance. It may be NIL has killed all the mid-major schools. None of the kids are staying in mid-major. I don’t know. It’s going to end up playing out. But I would leave the tournament alone, but that’s just me.”

If the tournament expanded to include 76 teams, eight games would reportedly be added to the Big Dance. Those eight games would be play-in games similar to the current “First Four.”

The 12 games would be played at two locations over the course of two days. NCAA executives reportedly want the first round of the tournament to still only include 64 teams, but provide more opportunities to other worthy team to play their way into the beloved event.

“There are every year some really good teams that don’t get to the tournament for a bunch of reasons,” NCAA president Charlie Baker said. “One of the reasons is we have 32 automatic qualifiers (for conference champions).

“I love that and think it’s great and never want that to change, but that means there’s only 36 slots left for everybody else. I don’t buy the idea that some of the teams that currently get left out aren’t good. I think they are. And I think that sucks.”

If Arkansas lives up to expectations this season, it won’t need any expansion to earn a spot in March Madness. Arkansas landed at No. 14 in the preseason AP Top 25.

After a lackluster start to SEC play last season, Arkansas finished the year strong, ultimately reaching the Sweet Sixteen before falling to Texas Tech. It was John Calipari’s first year as Arkansas’ head coach after spending 15 years at the helm of Kentucky.