CHARLOTTE, N.C. — Enlargement is perhaps coming to March Insanity.
In July, NCAA committees for Division I males’s and ladies’s basketball mentioned the probably of growth — doubtlessly to 72 or 76 groups — at size, however concluded these conferences with out an official vote. Whereas NCAA senior vice chairman of basketball Dan Gavitt mentioned that increasing the event for as quickly as 2026 stays a “viable” end result, the dimensions of arguably the preferred postseason competitors in faculty athletics stays in limbo with folks on each side loudly arguing for or towards it.
As media days for the preseason of school soccer proceed this week, the growth of March Insanity stays a sizzling matter. ACC Commissioner Jim Phillips fielded a number of questions on Tuesday on the Hilton Charlotte Uptown about it.
“Basketball is the crown jewel of all of our championships, I feel,” Phillips mentioned. “So we now have a accountability and obligation to guard it. It’s in a very great spot proper now at 68… Logistically it has to make sense. I feel it will be troublesome to push it by this 12 months if it expands. Who is aware of? There’s nonetheless time to try this, however I wish to do it in a very considerate, measured method.”
The ACC polled its males’s and ladies’s basketball coaches a number of weeks in the past about convention growth. Throughout his press convention, Phillips mentioned, “Our males’s coaches are extra in favor of growth. Our girls’s coaches are extra towards growth. It’s nearly like a break up within the convention because it’s associated to that.”
Jackie Carson — the ACC’s Senior Affiliate Commissioner for Ladies’s Basketball — backed that up Wednesday, telling SB Nation, “Just about the bulk (of ACC girls’s basketball coaches) was like, ‘We don’t need growth.’”
She pointed to a couple variations between the 2 tournaments as potential the reason why there’s a break up among the many males’s and ladies’s basketball coaches within the convention. A giant one is that the boys’s First 4 is performed at a singular impartial website in Dayton, Ohio, the place the ladies’s event hosts its First 4 video games at campus websites. Theoretically, an growth to 72 or extra groups would create extra of those play-in-type video games, including extra logistical complications for ladies’s applications who’ve earned the fitting to host through the event’s opening weekend.
This previous season, 4 ACC groups have been prime 16 seeds and hosted March Insanity video games: North Carolina, Duke, N.C. State and Notre Dame. The Tar Heels and Combating Irish each hosted First 4 contests.
“So, in the event you broaden, what does that appear like now? Our First 4 video games are on campuses and so they’re not extremely attended. It’s not like everybody’s going to Dayton on the boys’s facet,” Carson mentioned. “There’s a variety of messiness that comes with it due to our format at the moment. Now, if that modified, perhaps that might additionally spark a few of our coaches’ ideas. However proper now, attempting to play and journey as a First 4 is an absolute nightmare.”
N.C. State head coach Wes Moore has a variety of questions on growth too and stays a bit undecided on the topic. In 27 years as a Division I head coach, Moore has taken his groups at Chattanooga and N.C. State to March Insanity 18 instances, together with every of the previous eight consecutive tournaments.
“You understand, I sort of went backwards and forwards between staying the place we’re at, perhaps increasing to 72,” Moore mentioned Wednesday morning throughout a Zoom with reporters. “I’m good with no matter they resolve. What I used to be looking for out — and I by no means actually bought a solution — is, what would the bracket appear like? You understand, how a lot wouldn’t it add? How would these different 4 groups slot in?”
Carson additionally questions what event growth would imply for unit distribution, which simply arrived for ladies’s March Insanity, 34 years after the boys’s event bought it. In 2025, for the primary time ever, girls’s faculty basketball applications that performed in and received NCAA Event video games got a share of the income pie — generated largely by tv offers — based mostly on their efficiency. This previous 12 months, one unit in girls’s basketball was price about $113,000.
Conferences obtain cash from models and divide it amongst member faculties. Nevertheless, for the ACC, girls’s basketball unit distribution can be a part of the convention’s aggressive success initiative, which rewards particular person faculties for postseason success in an eat-what-you-kill kind of mannequin. Beforehand, solely soccer and males’s basketball have been included in that, however the ACC proactively arrange parameters for ladies’s basketball to be included too when unit funds started.
Nonetheless, growth of the event means there shall be extra mouths to feed in the case of divvying up the income pie for unit funds. Furthermore, there was a report from Entrance Workplace Sports activities which indicated that extra video games within the girls’s NCAA Event wouldn’t yield extra money from media rights from ESPN.
“We simply bought models. Are we including extra people who take out of that pot? Is it the identical pot of cash? I don’t want to separate it anymore,” Carson mentioned. “And truthfully, for ACC girls’s basketball, our coaches are assured that they will get into the event. So I don’t essentially want extra groups to have the ability to get in. The groups that have been on the bubble know what they should do to have the ability to get into the event subsequent 12 months.
“I feel our coaches are fairly assured that it’s been an outstanding event expertise. Why change it? Don’t repair one thing that’s not damaged… For me, March Insanity and the Olympics are like the head of sports activities. Why are we touching them?”
One other aspect of the ladies’s NCAA Event that some need modified is the format of the regional spherical. At present, because it has been for the previous three seasons, the 4 Candy 16 and Elite Eight regional quadrants of the bracket are performed at two websites. In 2026, these video games shall be performed in Fort Value, Texas, and Sacramento, California.
Regardless of loud complaints from longtime coaches like LSU’s Kim Mulkey, Vic Schaefer of Texas and UConn’s Geno Auriemma, NCAA President Charlie Baker shot down the concept of going again to a extra conventional format of 4 regional websites — like the boys have — again in April on the Ultimate 4. Baker cited a possible re-bidding course of as a hurdle to going again to 4 websites, and added that the elevated attendance on the double regionals has been a hit.
Within the ACC, there appears to be much less of a consensus amongst coaches relating to that aspect of the event.
“Personally, I like two regionals. I like fanbases coming in and seeing completely different types of basketball,” Carson mentioned. “As a former coach, I can say a coach goes to complain about one thing that doesn’t complement them. So like, if one of many regionals is close to Storrs, Connecticut, I’m certain Geno would have a distinct take… I additionally assume for ladies’s basketball, there’s one thing a few metropolis that desires you there. And typically it could not work out geographically that one’s on the East Coast and one’s on the West Coast and one’s on the north and one’s the south. I feel we’re simply continually attempting to determine methods to evolve.”
Carson added that ACC coaches “haven’t had one factor to say about” the double-regional format to her.
Moore of N.C. State has taken his workforce to far-flung regionals in every of the previous two seasons. The Wolfpack went to Portland, Oregon in 2024 — after which superior to the Ultimate 4 — and went to Spokane, Washington in 2025.
“I see their facet of it, positively,” Moore mentioned of the complaints from Mulkey, Schaefer and Auriemma. “So we’ve traveled throughout the nation each instances, as did Connecticut. And that’s exhausting, , not solely the three-hour time distinction, however then once you go to the Ultimate 4, there’s a reasonably fast turnaround.”
However Moore additionally remembers the way it was once. Within the last 12 months of 4 regional websites within the girls’s event in 2022, N.C. State — as a No. 1 seed — have been despatched to the Bridgeport, Connecticut regional and confronted No. 2 UConn of their yard. The Wolfpack misplaced to the Huskies in double extra time within the Elite Eight.
“Although it wasn’t on their dwelling court docket, we positively knew the place we have been. So, that was a troublesome option to go,” Moore mentioned. “I feel 4 (regional websites) would most likely be higher… However to me, if there’s an area workforce, you don’t allow them to play, , actual near their campus — perhaps discover a completely satisfied medium.”
