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Welcome to “Good Morning, Illini Nation,” your daily dose of college basketball news from Illini beat writer and AP Top 25 voter Scott Richey. He’ll offer up insights every morning on Brad Underwood’s team and college basketball at large:
The college basketball schedule will expand for the 2026-27 season, with teams able to schedule 32 regular season games. An increase of … one game.
CBS Sports’ Matt Norlander broke the news early Wednesday afternoon. The value of a single extra game might not seem like much, but Norlander reported that the increase comes as an attempt to stoke further high-profile, nonconference matchups throughout the season. At all points throughout the season, including February games like Illinois and Duke played in New York.
Expanding the schedule can also be a money move. One more game, if it’s at home, means more money from ticket sales, concessions, etc.
Here’s my question … Why stop at 32? Yes, when conference tournament and NCAA tournament play is included, some teams (say a national champion) might wind up with 40-plus games for the season.
Who cares? Big-time college athletics is a business. Why not fully treat it like that?
With power conference athletic departments about to fork over $20.5 million in revenue sharing this coming season — and that number increasing by 4 percent annually — the more games the better, right? More games doesn’t just mean more ticket sale revenue. It means more inventory for the networks that hold those conferences’ media rights.
So why not 35 games or even 40? If the maximum was 40, the Big Ten could go to Brad Underwood’s desired (I can never tell if he’s joking about it or not) full round robin with a 34-game slate, and that would still leave six games to schedule against other high-profile teams or the occasional buy game.
Further schedule expansion might not happen immediately, but that seems like a likely destination. It’s always more. Just look at everyone pushing for more teams to make the NCAA tournament. They didn’t care it was perfect the way it was with 64 teams when it grew to 68 in 2011, and the drum beats are getting louder for 72 or 76.
Always more.