The basics: The move is projected for the 2027 tournament. It’s the first tournament expansion since 2011, and the largest since 1985, when the tournament went to 64 teams.

The format would feature 12 games played on Tuesday and Wednesday to slim the field down to 64 before the tournament proceeds as it always has.

I have no idea how it will make the actual, physical bracket look. There’s no room on that sheet of paper for eight more games!

Expansion means the end of the “First Four” branding; those games would be called the “opening round.” Don’t worry, though: Reports indicate Dayton, Ohio would still host half of the opening round games. I will NEVER let them take away Dayton’s rightful place as the home of slightly-before-the-NCAA-Tournament-but-actually-part-of-the-NCAA-Tournament action.

The additional eight teams will be the next eight at-large teams. These teams would not be particularly good. They will likely be power conference also-rans with records slightly above .500.

Men’s teams that would have been included this past year, per ESPN: Indiana, which went 9-11 in Big Ten play and lost six of its last seven games; Cincinnati, which fired its coach after going .500 in Big 12 play; and of course, Auburn, which went 17-16 under Bruce Pearl’s son, Steven.

Notably: None of the additional teams this year would have been from mid-major leagues. ESPN speculates that the Mountain West would’ve gotten two more teams into the tournament (San Diego State and New Mexico), but those are big state schools with FBS football programs.

Many people view expansion as a blatant money grab by the NCAA. But here’s what gets me: It’s not even going to make the NCAA that much money!!!!!

The vast majority of the money the NCAA makes from the basketball tournament (and therefore, the vast majority of the money the NCAA makes as an organization) comes from its TV contract. But that TV contract is locked in! They already signed it! It’s in place through 2032!

Rachel Bachman of the Wall Street Journal reported that the TV contract doesn’t require broadcasters to pay more if the size of the tournament increases.

ESPN’s writeup said that the NCAA would receive modestly more profit, but didn’t specify how. Bachman’s article lays out a convoluted deal that the NCAA could strike with broadcasters, allowing everyone to profit off of previously untapped advertising sponsors like alcohol companies if the tournament expands.

I’d almost respect a blatant money grab more! If you’re going to do something that everybody hates — that’s going to be logistically difficult and screw up my bracket pool — you’d better be getting a billion dollars for it! What do you mean you’re doing all this for a share of potential revenue from alcohol sponsorships?

So who actually wants this? The move seems to come at the behest of the power conferences — notably the SEC, whose commissioner, Greg Sankey, has openly complained for years that SEC teams were being left out in favor of smaller-league champions.

The real justification: Sankey and other power conference commissioners would like their leagues to get a larger share of the NCAA Tournament payout, which is distributed based on how many teams they get into the tournament and how many games they win.

To a certain extent, the power leagues have a point. In the modern era of college hoops, mid-tier teams from power conferences have largely been better than the conference champions from smaller conferences. The last few years of chalky NCAA Tournaments have shown that there’s a significant, and growing, gap between the power conferences and everybody else.

But we already get to watch power conference teams play each other for five months. By the time the tournament rolls around, we don’t need to see the 11th-best SEC team play any more games, even if it is better than the smaller-league conference champion who is taking its place.

The magic of March Madness doesn’t come from creating a field that best represents the 64 or 68 or 76 best teams. It comes from giving smaller teams a shot to play the biggest names in the sport. It comes from taking teams from every conference and every part of the country — teams that the general public hasn’t seen yet — and letting them show off how special they are. More .500-ish teams from the Big Ten and SEC won’t add to that magic at all.

Dundon has owned the Hurricanes since 2018, and has made other sports investments in ventures like Topgolf, the Pro Pickleball Association, and the failed Alliance of American Football, which went bankrupt almost immediately after Dundon’s purchase. He agreed to buy the Blazers in August, but the deal didn’t become official until April, which is when the cost-cutting began.

Jason Quick of The Athletic wrote about how the Blazers were making team officials check out of hotels early to avoid late checkout fees, leaving the team masseuse without a room to treat players. They’ve also trimmed their travel party to exclude everybody except the staffers required to play the upcoming game.

That restriction includes players on the Blazers’ roster. Portland was the only team not to send its two-way players (who split time between the NBA and G-League and are not eligible to play in the playoffs) to road playoff games. After that story broke, the Blazers posted that they were, in fact, bringing their two-way guys along with them.

Dundon also did away with the league-wide tradition of giving fans a t-shirt at home playoff games, instead giving out cheaper-to-produce rally towels.

Let me tell you: I still wear the t-shirt that the Knicks put on my seat during the 2023 Eastern Conference semifinals, but I have absolutely no use for the dozens of rally towels I have received at various games over the years. I’ve tried using them as hand towels in the bathroom but they’re weirdly sized.

Portland’s season was saved by interim head coach Tiago Splitter, who guided the team to the playoffs after head coach Chauncey Billups was arrested for his alleged involvement in an illegal gambling ring. But Dundon hasn’t removed the interim tag from Splitter, and reportedly offered him a contract “far below a standard NBA head coaching salary.” A source in The Athletic story called the Blazers’ disrespect towards Splitter “the most vicious thing I’ve encountered in 30-plus years.”

Jake Fischer of The Stein Line reported that Dundon would like to pay the team’s next head coach a salary in the range of $1.5 million. That’s comically low. That’s less than 10 percent of what Steve Kerr makes as the highest paid coach in the league, and probably less than half of the lowest NBA head coaching salary. Among Division I men’s college coaches, it would rank 72nd of the 75 coaches in the USA Today Sports database. One of Quick’s sources disputed that claim, saying the coaching salary figures were “the one thing that is not true” about Dundon’s penny-pinching.

But, uh … he did the same thing with the Hurricanes. The key to Carolina’s recent success has been head coach Rod Brind’Amour, a franchise legend who helped the Canes win the 2006 Stanley Cup as a player. (Editor’s note: I initially called him Rob Brind’Amour. He’s now free to call me Robger if we ever meet.) After he was hired in 2018, he quickly ended the longest postseason drought in the NHL, and has made the playoffs in every season as head coach. Dundon initially offered him the lowest salary of any head coach in the NHL. Brind’Amour went along with it, and has continued to accept a below-market salary to remain with Carolina despite being considered one of the league’s best coaches.

After taking over, Dundon lowballed the Hurricanes’ longtime announcers who had been with the team since its inception. He reportedly offered the radio announcer an 80 percent pay cut, and tried to convert the TV announcer to an independent contractor whose pay was tied to stadium attendance.

Hockey journalist Sean Shapiro outlined other reasons why Dundon is known as a cheapskate around the NHL. (Although he does not appear to have purchased cheap skates for the team.)

Dundon’s billions were built on the backs of America’s poor. He was a pioneer in the subprime auto lending industry, issuing car loans to people with poor credit. He bet on the fact that car-dependent Americans would be desperate to hold onto their vehicles at any cost — and might even default on home payments before losing their cars. “You can sleep in your car, but you can’t drive your house to work,” an investor said in a 2015 New York Times article about Dundon’s businesses. It paid off; Dundon sold his company, Drive Financial, for hundreds of millions of dollars, and he maintains ties to the industry. Pro Publica reported accusations of predatory lending leveled at Dundon’s companies. A source noted that Dundon “was one of the individuals that really grew the industry. Many would argue that he took it to a new level.”

Dundon is pushing for arena renovations entirely paid for by the public — not even a cent of commitment from Dundon himself. His proposal is a stark departure from construction of the Moda Center, which was mainly paid for by the Blazers’ previous owner, Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen.

It’s worth noting: These teams print money! The Hurricanes have gone up about 600 percent in value in the nine years since Dundon bought the team.

I just don’t get why you would act this way. What is the point of having billions if you’re going to hassle people over hundreds?

While the Pistons wouldn’t be the most surprising first-round loss for a 1-seed in NBA history (sorry 2007 Mavs), it still would be stunning to see the Magic pull off the upset. Coach Jamahl Mosley seemed to be a pariah in Orlando’s locker room before the playoffs. Paolo Banchero tried to finish off the series last night with 45 points, but Cade Cunningham matched him and sent the series back to Orlando for at least one more.

The Knicks have outscored the Hawks by 54 points through five games … unfortunately, two of those games were one-point losses. The Knicks have dominated and could still lose. I AM LOSING MY MIND ABOUT IT.

The Celtics are up 3-2 on the Sixers, but Joel Embiid looks like a new man without his appendix. He had 33 points and eight assists in a comeback win Tuesday night.

The Timberwolves went up 3-1 on the Nuggets, and then Anthony Edwards and Donte DiVincenzo got injured. Sort of a weird experiment to see whether Minnesota can cover a -2.5 game spread against Nikola Jokic without its entire starting backcourt

Will LeBron and the Lakers blow a 3-0 series lead against the Rockets? It’s on the table as Houston has now won two in a row. Winner gets to lose in a sweep to Oklahoma City.

I don’t know what’s going on with the Cavs and the Raptors. I don’t want to know.

How the WNBA found community and financial success in Connecticut when it wasn’t clear women’s sports would ever be profitable, and now that they clearly are profitable, the league is abandoning that community in favor of the same owners who didn’t have the patience to lose money on the league in its early days.

Just trying to understand what’s up with the state of Connecticut, which has become even more mystifying to me since I moved here last August