Playoff Proposal

[SlowingDown]

https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2026/05/05/report-college-football-coaches-endorse-24-team-cfp-format/

This happens, it is all over boys.

No big boy playoffs, no bowl games. The mothership will make more off a 24 team championship playoff than all the bowl games they own. If they're playing the same day as Army/Navy, that should tell you a lot. The PAC will just be another college football non power league.

After this, up next, men's basketball. Heard something about expanding the field to 76 next year. That will kill the NIT and the Crown tournament.

It's over. Someone break the news to Bluto.

[Headcase33]

This is heartbreaking man back down to the low class of CFB

[SlowingDown]

Might want to change the name of the thread. Playoff proposal(s) doesn't express the graveness to UL athletics.

Well, it was a hell of a run for UL MBB back in the day. 😞. There obviously NOTHING any non power conference AD could do about this, much like football. Another step towards separation, basically a play-in bracket for "all you others."

According to CBS’s Matt Norlander, the NCAA has voted to officially expand the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments to 76 teams.

The NCAA cleared the deal with its various media partners after already approving the plan through its lower committees.

“With the new expansion, the additional eight teams would be added to the current ‘First Four’ play-in round, currently held on Tuesday and Wednesday,” On3 reports. “The newly expanded play-in round would then feature 24 teams playing 12 games over two days before the winners join the other 52 teams already in the traditional first-round field that initial weekend.”

Norlander reports that, “All 16 seeds and half of the 15 seeds will make up half of the initial 24-team field. The final 12 teams will be a mixture of 11-, 12- and possibly 13-seeds.”

https://www.breitbart.com/sports/2026/05/07/report-ncaa-votes-to-expand-march-madness-tournament-for-men-women-to-76-teams/

[Duckster]

If the expansion results in more 2 bid conferences (i.e. the Sunbelt) then could be net positive even if a play-in Opening Round bid. You win the play-in game, gain $$ units, advance. Otherwise expansion is not only unnecessary, its just watering down the regular season much like the eventual expansion of CFP to 24 teams will do. The P4 is pushing this change. IMO, the old 64 team bracket was the greatest 'playoff' of all sports.

[RaginDave]

This is something similar to what I had suggested in a previous post. The only caveat that I had to this was that I suggested a 2nd tear tournament having another 32 teams, in an NIT type situation and eliminating all bowl games. The 32-team format would include all conference champions that did not play in the CFB model and then any other at large teams. Teams could decide not to play in this model if the chose not to (that would be the P4 conferences that could/would prefer not to). These games would be played on Wednesday and Thursday nights, not to compete with the CFB model that would be played on Friday and Saturdays. These games would be played at team's stadiums, rather than the bowl format based on the higher seeded team and would be played in a regional format, not seeding them 1-32. Meaning if SDSU made the lower tier tournament and so did UCLA but UCLA was ranked higher than them in the CFP standings or vice versa. None of these teams would be seeded, they would just be put into the most logical pod.