President Charlie Baker set a timeline of early April to determine whether the NCAA Tournament would expand in 2026.Speaking at a sports business conference in Las Vegas on Wednesday, Baker described growing support to increase the number of teams in the NCAA Tournament from 68 by up to eight.He said media and TV executives and most conference commissioners are increasingly open to bringing additional teams into March Madness following NCAA vice president Dan Gavitt’s proposals in June.”I’m bullish on the conversations we’ve had about going to 72 or 76, and I think the committees are willing to consider that, but I don’t think it’s going to be anything beyond that,” Baker said Wednesday.Some coaches, including John Calipari and Tom Izzo, were outspoken in March about maintaining a semblance of exclusivity with the current setup in place since the First Four was added in 2011. But there were others in the 2024 NCAA Tournament, like Akron’s John Groce, who said lower-exposure leagues like the Mid-American Conference deserve a shot additional at-large bids.Multiple high-profile commissioners, including Greg Sankey in the SEC, proclaimed automatic bids for smaller conferences have diluted the depth of the Field of 68. Automatic tournament bids are won by 32 conference champions.A couple SEC coaches know there’s nothing automatic against teams that win their conference to claim tournament bids.On the first day of the 2024 NCAA Tournament, Horizon League champion and automatic bid-winner Oakland was a 14 seed and knocked off No. 3 seed Kentucky in the first round. Ivy League champion and automatic bid-winner Yale, seeded 13th in the East Region, erased plenty of brackets and No. 4 seed Auburn, 78-76, a day later.Auburn had just completed a sprint through the SEC tournament, while Yale entered the game as a nine-loss team that lost to Vermont, Cornell, Brown and Princeton in the regular season. But the Ivy League has produced a win in the NCAA Tournament in back-to-back years.Oakland had 11 losses in the regular season. The legend of fifth-year senior Jack Gohlke might not have existed if a structural shift moved to erase bids for small-conference champions. Gohlke made a tournament-record 10 3-pointers to sink the Wildcats and plant Oakland’s euphoric flag.