Dan Wetzel shreds NCAA Tournament expansion talks as 'world-class dumb'

The idea of expanding the NCAA Tournament has been tossed around for the past decade, it seems. The last expansion to the NCAA Tournament came all the way back in 2011, when the field expanded from 64 to 68 teams. Prior to 2011, the last expansion came in 1985, when the Tournament was expanded from 48 to 64.

NCAA president Charlie Baker met with media ahead of the organization’s annual mock NCAA Tournament seeding exercise in mid-February, where he revealed that he was in favor of expansion.

“We’re still talking about it,” Baker told reporters, according to ESPN’s Jeff Borzello. “I’d like to see it expand.”

During the latest edition of the ‘College GameDay Podcast‘, ESPN’s Dan Wetzel completely trashed the idea of expanding the Tournament in any shape or form.

“(The NCAA) wants to expand the basketball tournament. They want to take away the magic of the first Thursday and Friday of March Madness, which is an unbelievable, valuable thing,” Wetzel said. “What do they want to do? Let’s make Tuesday and Wednesday bigger and confuse when this event starts. It will go down as one of the dumbest branding decisions of all time.

“All so we can get like 15-14 Auburn into the Tournament? Come on. What they’re thinking of doing with this Tournament is world-class dumb. We don’t want Sunday at The Masters anymore, let’s have a Monday where we take the top-four and make them play again.”

NCAA Tournament expansion has become hot-button topic amongst fans, coaches

Yahoo! Sports insider and On3 contributor Ross Dellenger reported last October that further NCAA Tournament expansion “is becoming closer to reality.” And, based on discussions at that time, the expectation was that the field would likely expand from 68 to 76 teams beginning with the 2026-27 season.

Per the 76-team proposal passed around last Fall, the additional eight teams would be added to the current “First Four” play-in round, currently held on Thursday and Friday before the full 64-team first-round slate kicks off during the tournament’s opening weekend. The new play-in round would then feature 24 teams playing 12 games over two days before the winners join the other 52 teams already in the traditional first-round field that initial weekend.

Of course, that news brought mixed reactions from within the college basketball world. Kansas head coach Bill Self initially pushed back on the 76-team proposal last preseason.

“Uh, you know, I would say my initial hunch would probably be no. But I thought it was no when we went from 48 to 54, and then no when you go from 54 to 64, and no when you go from 64 to 68 – you know, all that stuff,” Self said in October, later adding: “I don’t know if that’s the most positive thing. But, as long as The Masters is with CBS, and the (NCAA) Tournament is with CBS, you’ve got to squeeze everything into that three-weekend window. I actually have no answers, but my initial gut is I think we’re okay at 68.”

If the Tournament were expanded to 76 teams this season, teams such as Auburn (15-14, 6-10), USC (18-11, 7-11), Cal (20-9, 8-8), and Cincinnati (16-13, 8-8) would all be surefire at-large teams.

On3’s Alex Byington contributed to this article.