NCAA Tournament expansion among the many official recommendations from transformation committee

March Madness could be one step closer to a new look. The NCAA Transformation Committee made multiple recommendations Tuesday, including potential expanding the tournament by 25%.

The committee made its recommendations Tuesday afternoon and it could lead to a 90-team tournament field — a significant increase from the current tournament — depending on multiple factors. According to the committee, expanding tournaments will be decided on a sport by sport basis. Sports Illustrated’s Ross Dellenger noted an expanded NCAA Tournament is not a slam dunk, though. He said “many” in college basketball circles do not support the idea of increasing the field from 68 teams.

“To reiterate: Each sport’s oversight/governance group must support the recommendation and adopt the change to expand their championship tournament,” Dellenger tweeted. “Many in the basketball world are NOT in support of expansion. We’ll see.”

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey, ACC commissioner Jim Phillips among those calling for expanded NCAA Tournament

SEC commissioner Greg Sankey has been among the leading voices calling for an expanded tournament field, citing Texas A&M’s exclusion from last year’s field as a reason why. He’s also a member of the transformation committee.

“What I’ve been through is a set on conversations at the national level, about being fearful through this NCAA transformation process that things would be taken away. My advocacy was, rather than worrying about taking things away, why don’t we take a step back and think about how we grow?” Sankey said in October. “The division’s grown over time. The number of members, the quality of basketball, the commitment that I’ve talked about here, the expectations that are upon any number of programs nationally. So, why don’t we facilitate those opportunities?

“It’s informed by the fact that I think [Texas] A&M was playing as well as anyone in men’s basketball last March and didn’t have access. Then you look at baseball, where Ole Miss is recognized as the last team in, and then is of such competitive quality that it wins a national championship. It opens your mind to say, are we leaving some of these teams in a bandwidth of maybe the top 50 out, from a net standpoint? That should be looked at differently.”

Phillips made his point at ACC Media Days, saying the idea of expanding the field was worth exploring.

“It’s time to look at that. It’s time to look at the expansion of all conference championships — not conference championships but National Championships,” Phillips said.