ORLANDO — NCAA president Charlie Baker said discussions are underway with March Madness media-rights holders CBS and Warner Bros. Discovery about expanding the men’s tournament from 68 to 72 or 76 teams, beginning in 2026.

“We’ve had good conversations with CBS and WBD,” Baker said Thursday at the Big 12 spring meetings. “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.”

Baker confirmed expansion could come immediately. “That would be the goal—to try and do this for next year, which is why the window to actually negotiate it will probably end sometime early summer,” he said.

“We’ve been talking about 72 and 76,” Baker added. “Those have been the numbers the basketball committee’s talked about. It would obviously be one or the other, won’t be more.”

Baker’s comments came a day after Kansas men’s basketball coach Bill Self said Big 12 men’s coaches were in favor of expanding March Madness.

Earlier this year, Big 12 commissioner Brett Yormark said he approved of expansion, too, if CBS and WBD were committed to paying more for their media rights.

Thursday afternoon, media executives told FOS that the additional games were not worth much. One executive who declined to be named was very straightforward: “I believe CBS and TNT will offer them zero—or a minus amount. They’re expanding the earliest round for no apparent reason other than the powers that be think it’s worth more.”

Creating the Best Bracket

While Baker said the NCAA has no intention of changing the 31 automatic qualifiers for March Madness, he admitted those entries keep out teams that are tournament-worthy, in his mind.

“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 said.

“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.”

In yet another potential move by the SEC and Big Ten to separate themselves from the rest of college sports, the two conferences are discussing a football scheduling alliance aimed at further strengthening both conferences.

LSU head coach Brian Kelly said at SEC spring meetings this week in Florida that coaches in the conference are strongly in favor of establishing a more formal structure to create an annual set of non-conference games involving teams from the Big Ten.

“As coaches, I can speak for the room: We want to play Big Ten teams,” Kelly said. “We’ve made our voices clear. Our ADs know that we would like that. Our commissioner obviously heard us as well. The rest will be up to what gets negotiated.”

Currently, non-conference games involving teams from the SEC and Big Ten are scheduled more on an individual basis, with teams such as Alabama already more aggressive in pursuing such matchups. What’s now being discussed is moving to a larger and more established framework to create these games.

“One [way to do this] is to just stay out of it, kind of like we do now. The second is you try and facilitate more,” said SEC commissioner Greg Sankey. “The third is we agree both for a mandate. That third one is incredibly difficult.”

Complicating factors would be existing scheduling requirements and obligations, such as in-conference games and the preservation of non-conference, in-state rivalries such as Georgia–Georgia Tech, Florida–Florida State, and South Carolina–Clemson. The obvious benefits, however, from an SEC–Big Ten scheduling alliance would include creating more attractive contests for the conferences and their TV rights holders, as well as enhancing the opportunities for both conferences to further dominate the College Football Playoff.

Competitive Envy

Some of Kelly’s sentiment also comes from the Big Ten’s Ohio State and Michigan claiming the last two national titles after a run of four straight championships by SEC teams. 

“The Big Ten right now holds it on the SEC,” he said. “That’s the reality of it. We want to get challenged in that regard, and we’d like to be able to get that done.”

The SEC–Big Ten scheduling discussion also intertwines with a separate one surrounding a potential expansion of the CFP to 16 teams. While consensus is growing strongly toward a 16-team format, how those slots are populated remains a subject of fierce debate. One leading option would be a “5+11” model in which the five highest-ranked conference champions get five automatic bids, followed by 11 at-large ones, but nothing is set. 

“The best system should be 16, and it should be the 16 best,” said Ole Miss coach Lane Kiffin.

Earlier this week, Sankey suggested a larger potential separation by the SEC from the NCAA and said he has “people in my room asking, ‘Why are we still in the NCAA?’”

For the second year in a row, the Timberwolves have been eliminated in the Western Conference finals in five games—and they were again blown out in the close-out game. Minnesota enters the offseason facing the same question: Does it have enough around superstar Anthony Edwards to build a true title contender? 

The T-Wolves enter the summer with more stability at the top because the team’s ownership dispute has been resolved. Last month, Marc Lore and Alex Rodriguez officially took control of the franchise from Glen Taylor. 

The team also has slightly more financial flexibility entering the offseason because of last year’s shocking trade of Karl-Anthony Towns to the Knicks for Julius Randle and Donte DiVincenzo. ESPN’s Bobby Marks projects Minnesota to have a $199 million payroll for the 2025–26 season, which would put them over the first salary apron ($195.9 million) but under the second apron ($207.8 million).

Many have quibbled over whether trading Towns lowered the team’s ceiling, but it has given the Wolves several options this offseason when it comes to three key players: Randle, Naz Reid, and Nickeil Alexander-Walker. The first two both have player options for next season and are eligible for long-term extensions (as much as four years, $194 million for Randle and four years, $87 million for Reid). Alexander-Walker will be an unrestricted free agent, and he will likely look for more than the $4.3 million he made this season.

The Wolves can choose to retain all three players, but this would likely put them over the second apron and wipe out the cap management progress they made last season with the Towns trade.

They could stay below the second apron if Randle, 30, and Reid, 25, opt in to their contracts or sign manageable long-term extensions. This would likely make Alexander-Walker the odd man out, though the Wolves have several guards who could fill his position (Terrence Shannon Jr. and Rob Dillingham) as well as the 17th and 31st picks in the draft.

That move, however, would mean the Wolves would have to hope continuity will propel them to the Thunder’s level next year in a loaded Western Conference. It’s not far-fetched, especially because Minnesota went from the No. 8 seed in the first year after its controversial trade for Rudy Gobert to the No. 3 seed the following year after running it back.

If new ownership feels compelled to rock the boat, the team could trade Randle or Reid (or both), whether as expiring contracts or on longer deals via a sign-and-trade. It would be another huge risk—and the team isn’t guaranteed a multiple-time All-Star like Towns or Randle in return—but it’s a decision worth considering when building around one of the league’s best young stars in Edwards.