Greg Sankey wants to expand the NCAA Tournament field

The NCAA Tournament is one of the best events in sports, certainly the best in college sports. You could go as far as to argue that it’s one of the few things the NCAA does right. Yet, one of college athletics’ most powerful figures thinks it should change. SEC Commissioner Greg Sankey said yesterday that he believes it’s time to rethink the format of the NCAA Tournament, specifically, broadening the field.

Sankey used two SEC teams as examples of why an expanded NCAA tournament makes sense. First, he pointed out that Ole Miss, the last team into the College World Series, ended up winning it all.

“If the last team in can win the national championship, and they’re in the 30s or 40s from an RPI or [NCAA] NET standpoint, is our current approach supporting national championship competition?” Sankey asked per Pat Forde. “I think there’s health in that conversation. That doesn’t exclude people. It goes to: How do we include people in these annual national celebrations that lead to a national champion?”

As the SEC and other major conferences continue to expand, there’s fear an expanded NCAA Tournament would lead to mid-major and low-major conferences losing their automatic bids. While mentioning Texas A&M’s NCAA Tournament snub, Sankey mentioned a lot of the smaller schools that made big runs in the tournament over the years as further proof it’s time to let more teams in.

“I thought [SEC member] Texas A&M should have been in the field in basketball [last season],” Sankey said. “People didn’t agree. But the way they played at the end of the year, I firmly think they were one of the better teams in the country. I’m biased. But somebody else, Dayton was one of the first four out.

“Look at what UCLA did as an 11-seed [in 2021], what Virginia Commonwealth did as an 11-seed [in 2011] … Those are three teams that played [in the First Four] in Dayton and went to the Final Four eventually. It should broaden our thinking.”

Before we mess with the NCAA Tournament, let’s just move the SEC Championship game to Saturday, please.