NCAA Tournament expansion on the horizon?

Boise State was among the first four men’s basketball teams left out of the 2025 NCAA Tournament. 

The 68-team event could be expanding in the near future. 

In a Thursday morning interview with Front Office Sports reporter David Rumsey, NCAA president Charlie Baker said the NCAA Tournament could expand by up to eight teams as soon as next year. 

“That would be the goal, to try and do this for next year,” Baker told Rumsey at the Big 12 Spring Meetings in Orlando, Florida. “We’ve been talking about 72 and 76 (teams).”

Baker said the NCAA has no plans to remove the 31 automatic bids handed out to conference champions. 

“If you have a tournament that’s got 68 teams in it, you’re going to have a bunch of teams that are probably among what most people would consider be the best 68 or 70 teams in the country that aren’t going to make the tournament — period — because you get a whole bunch of people who win their conference tournaments who aren’t in that group,” Baker explained. 

“So, the point behind going from 68 to 72 or 76 is to basically give some of those schools that probably were among the best teams in the country a way into the tournament.”

Expansion discussions with CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery — the NCAA Tournament’s TV partners — are ongoing, Baker said. 

“We’ve had good conversations with CBS and WBD,” Baker added. “Our goal here is to try to either get to yes or no sometime in the next few months, because there’s a lot of logistical work that would be associated with doing this, if we were to go down this road.”

The NCAA Tournament expanded to 68 teams in 2011. From 1985-2010, 64 teams qualified for the NCAA Tournament. 

Boise State had its streak of three consecutive NCAA Tournament appearances snapped in 2025. The Broncos finished 24-10 overall and were one of the first four teams left out alongside West Virginia, Indiana and Ohio State. 

The last four teams in were North Carolina, Xavier, Texas and fellow Mountain West Conference bubble team San Diego State.

Four MWC teams made the NCAA Tournament: MWC Tournament champion Colorado State, regular-season champion New Mexico, San Diego State and Utah State. The Lobos and Rams both reached the round-of-32.

Boise State is 0-10 all-time in the NCAA Tournament.