NCAA Tournament expansion is the latest ripple effect of the NIL era

The last several years have brought drastic changes across the college sports landscape. The introduction of NIL and the Transfer Portal gave players more power than ever, in a way creating free agency for the players. Last summer, the House Settlement brought revenue sharing to college athletics as schools now directly pay their players.

As schools are now tasked with shelling out additional money, the budgets have grown, and schools need to find a way to handle the costs. Some schools have cut non-revenue sports, with Arkansas just cutting its Tennis teams last week, but there was always going to be a way for the schools to make more money.

NCAA Tournament expansion is a loss for college sports

On Tuesday Night, news broke that the Men's and Women's NCAA Basketball Tournaments would be expanding to 76 teams as soon as next season.

In prior years, NCAA Tournament expansion would've been far less appealing to everyone, but it doesn't feel like a coincidence that it happens a year after schools needed to start paying their athletes. Schools were always going to find a way to make more money, and the addition of games to the NCAA Tournament was an easy way to add additional revenue.

College Football Playoff expansion was the first signal of what could come, and now we might see continued expansion in football and basketball year over year. Networks are clearly willing to pay for the rights to more high stakes matchups, and if the schools are looking to make up for the money they're paying players, it's an easy fix.

The next few years will be telling as the expansion in both sports could start to get out of control. College football is next to watch as expansion talks have been going on for over a year, and we're certainly going to see more teams added sooner rather than later with how popular the Playoff games have become.

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