Expansion may not even occur.
When the learned people and the elders get together this weekend to figure out what colleges belong in the NCAA Men’s College Basketball Tournament, which to TV people and media members is also known as March Madness, they will choose 37 schools to go along with 31 other schools who have automatic slots in the basketball festival. But this might be the last year of just 68 teams crammed into a playoff setting. There could be as few as four schools or as many as eight schools or maybe none added to the proceedings next year.
“I do think that there will be an opportunity to make a decision about ’26 sometime in the coming months, but if that decision is not to move forward with expansion, I don’t know that that is going to resolve the issue over the next five-to-eight years either,” NCAA Senior Vice President of Basketball Dan Gavitt told CBS Sports. “Could be that the smartest thing to do is to wait and see whether or not the House settlement happens and is approved by the judge on April 7th, what the ramifications of that going forward are, and whether this should be a topic that is considered a year or two from now, more so than it is right now.” Grant House and Sedona Prince sued the National Collegiate Athletic Association in a class action lawsuit brought against the NCAA and five collegiate athletic conferences in which the NCAA agreed to allow its member institutions to distribute funds to Division I athletes who have played since 2016. On May 23rd, 2024, the NCAA voted to settle the lawsuit for $2.75 billion setting up a mechanism to distribute up to $20 billion to Division I athletes who have played since 2016. The proposed settlement must still be approved by Judge Claudia Wilken. College basketball is a business.
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