Coach K opposes March Madness expansion: ‘I don’t think you mess with something that’s gold’
Former Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski, one of college basketball’s most respected voices, said he opposes expanding the NCAA Tournament field because adding more teams could dilute the magic of the sport’s beloved month.
Sharing his thoughts Monday on “The Field of 68” podcast, the five-time national championship-winning coach said college sports’ modern era with the transfer portal threatens the Cinderella stories that make March Madness a beloved event.
“There are less teams capable right now than ever before, and there’s many have-nots, and it’s not their fault,” Krzyzewski said. “I don’t think you mess with something that’s gold. It’s gold.”
In mid-February, expansion talks were paused until after the 2026 tournament, with NCAA president Charlie Baker saying he’d “like to see it expand.”
While tournament expansion could create more opportunities for smaller schools to make Cinderella runs through the bracket, Krzyzewski said he believes those programs would get progressively weaker due to the transfer portal.
“There’ll be less Cinderella stories, though,” Krzyzewski said. “The low division and many mid-Division I programs, if they have a good player who’s a freshman, there’s a great chance they’re not going to be there the next year.”
Baker is in favor of keeping the existing model with 31 automatic qualifiers, or AQs, for conference champions, but he wants to expand the tournament field to include more at-large bids. The current format grants 37 at-large bids, and every year, some teams ranked in the top 50 in RPI and other key ranking metrics are left out of the Big Dance.
“The more you do to create opportunities for the so-called bubble teams each year to get into the tournament, first of all, it puts some other really good teams that probably might belong there,” Baker told reporters in February.
“But it also protects the AQs, right? Because I don’t want to end up in a situation where people say we need to do something about the AQs because we’re keeping too many good teams out of the tournament.”
In addition to his thoughts on tournament expansion, Krzyzewski also said that college basketball needs centralized leadership. As NCAA president, Baker is seen as the head of college basketball, but Krzyzewski said the sport could benefit from more specialized leadership.
“He’s a good guy, and he’s inherited, really, a quagmire of what to do,” Krzyzewski said. “… I think the thing you should mess with is getting a leadership group and having them study and see what happens with that group.
“It’s not just one person. Actually, they should run it like the NBA — a staff and all that. Run it like a business. But I wouldn’t mess with gold right now, and the NCAA Tournament is certainly that.”
Krzyzewski, 79, coached the Blue Devils from 1980 to 2022. He set records for NCAA Tournament appearances (36), tournament wins (101) and Final Four appearances (13). He ranks as the men’s all-time leader in wins as a coach with 1,202.
The 2026 NCAA Tournament field will begin to fill out this weekend, as more conference tournaments kick off. In The Athletic’s Tournament Watch, a part of the Bracket Central series, Auburn, San Diego State, VCU and USC are all on the bubble but in the first four out.
Cal, Virginia Tech, Seton Hall and West Virginia are in the next four out. Santa Clara, New Mexico, TCU and Indiana get in as the last four, according to the current projection.
