What A 96-Team Bracket Looks Like, If Every Conference Got Two Bids

What if the NCAA gave two automatic bids to each of the 32 Division 1 basketball conferences? We’d be able to create the best 96-team tournament in recorded history.

As I outlined, I would like to see the NCAA do this if it’s serious about expanded the tournament. Adding 28 teams and having them all be bubble teams would be a disaster. But this way, the tournament could expand with more teams in more locations without completely sacrificing the regular. In fact, the regular would mean more!

Let’s review how it would work:

• 32 regular season champions (#1 seed in conference tournament)
• 32 tournament champions (if #1 seed wins conference tournament, who they beat gets the bid)
• 32 at-large bids

If we use 2023 as a use case, we see that we need to add 28 teams to the 68 announced. There were 23 one-bid leagues this year, so they would each get a second team. Of those 23, 11 had #1 seeds (regular season champions) that did not win its conference tournament. The other 12 new teams lost to #1 seeds in the conference title game and would get in that way. Of those, 5 were teams with losing conference records that would go right to the back of the pack.