ACC commissioner open to expanding March Madness: 'More access, more opportunity for more young men and women'

"It's the crown jewel of all of our championships," ACC commissioner Jim Phillips recently told ESPN's Jeff Borzello regarding college basketball's March Madness.

What started as a conversation about perhaps being able to expand the College Football Playoff as soon as 2024 quickly turned into a conversation about expanding other areas of college athletics. Letting more schools into "the dance" on both the men's and women's side of things is something that Phillips is open to.

"It's time to look at it," he told ESPN. "It's the crown jewel of all of our championships. There's nothing that really duplicates it, on both sides, on the men's side and the women's side. So you have to be respectful of not messing it up, either, and understand it's in a really good, healthy place. But you also have to continue to be progressive, and I try to think about those things in that way.

"I'm a believer that the [automatic qualifiers] and winning a championship matters. It should matter. I'm not interested in reducing the AQs. I'm just not. But I'm also committed to making sure those that deserve to get into a tournament should. ... You're trying to balance the access across Division I. Making sure the AQs remain there for conferences. They need that. They need that for the financial piece of it, they need it for the emotional piece of it, to be part of it, etc. But you also have a group that at the highest level is clamoring for more access for their teams. That just leads itself to discussion of, we need to take a holistic perspective and review of college basketball and the tournament."

There's something to be said about not changing something that isn't broken. After all, the first weekend of March Madness basically shuts down office buildings all across America. How many "sick days" are used to watch the opening round of action?

Still, Phillips sees expanding the NCAA basketball tournaments as a chance to provide more chances, invite a few more Cinderellas to the ball.

"More access, more opportunity for more young men and women," he said. "There's a lot of positives to that."

More March Madness? That will be tough to argue against.