Locked On ACC - Daily College Football & Basketball Podcast - MONEY GRAB: Why Alex Donno and Kenton Gibbs DESTROY NCAA Tournament EXPANSION

Episode Date: April 29, 2026

NCAA Tournament expansion sparks controversy as college basketball prepares for a 76-team field. Are fans and athletes truly on board, or is money driving the madness? Alex Donno and Kenton Gibbs debate the impact on Cinderella stories, the role of media partners, and the accelerating divide between powerhouse programs and mid-majors. The conversation heats up around Texas Tech's dramatic fall in the CBS Sports Post Spring Top 25 after the stunning Brandon Sorsby gambling scandal, raising questions about roster depth and backup quarterbacks. Plus, proposed NCAA bylaw changes could limit athlete movement, igniting pushback from players and agents. Can college sports strike a fair balance amid shifting NIL rules and playoff expansions, or will chaos reign? Everydayer ClubIf you never miss an episode, it’s time to make it official. Join the Locked On Everydayer Club and get ad-free audio, access to our members-only Discord, and more — all built for our most loyal fans. Click here to learn more and join your team’s community: https://lockedonpodcasts.com/everydayerclub   Support Us By Supporting Our Sponsors! Indeed Listeners of this show get a $75 Sponsored Job Credit to help give your job the premium placement it deserves at http://Indeed.com/podcast FanDuel Today's episode is brought to you by FanDuel. Right now new customers can bet just five dollars and get one-hundred and fifty dollars in bonus bets if your first bet wins. Visit https://FANDUEL.COM to get started — Play Your Game.   FANDUEL DISCLAIMER: 21+ in select states. First online real money wager only. Bonus issued as nonwithdrawable free bets that expires in 14 days. Restrictions apply. See terms at sportsbook.fanduel.com. Gambling Problem? Call 1-800-GAMBLER or visit FanDuel.com/RG (CO, IA, MD, MI, NJ, PA, IL, VA, WV), 1-800-NEXT-STEP or text NEXTSTEP to 53342 (AZ), 1-888-789-7777 or visit ccpg.org/chat (CT), 1-800-9-WITH-IT (IN), 1-800-522-4700 (WY, KS) or visit ksgamblinghelp.com (KS), 1-877-770-STOP (LA), 1-877-8-HOPENY or text HOPENY (467369) (NY), TN REDLINE 1-800-889-9789 (TN) Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

You didn't want this. Nobody wants this. But they're going to give you a 76 team NCAA tournament. You are Locked-on ACC, your daily podcast on the Atlantic Coast Conference. Part of the Locked-on Podcast Network, your team every day. He's Kenton Gibbs from Locked-on Wolfpack. I'm Alex Dono from Locked-on-Caines. And on this episode of Locked-on-ACC, an updated post-spring top 20.

Texas A&M takes a, sorry, Texas Tech takes a tumble. I get my Texas schools confused, but maybe not as far as you thought, despite the fact that their quarterback will likely never be allowed to play again. There is a proposed new rule that would allow NCAA institutions to make sure what happened with Dary and Mensa and Duke never happens again. This is really interesting. But let's talk NCAA tournament expansion. And this Kent and Gibbs has been a weird couple of weeks

because there's a groundswell of support for expanding the football playoff. And now this basketball thing, it looks like this is going to happen. Pete Thammo from ESPN reports the NCAA has initiated the final steps to expand the men's and women's basketball tournaments to 76 teams, sources told ESPN. And like, I don't think I've talked to a single college basketball fan who wants eight more teams in the tournament. So I know it's not the fans who are asking for this. It's got to be anybody who makes money off of it, right? True TV, CBS, TNT, the NCAA, because this is like nobody wants eight more teams in an even bigger tournament than we have right now.

Am I correct? especially with the current layout of college sports. College sports now more than ever, the stratification between the halves and the half-knots is getting greater than ever. What sport does that matter the most for? College basketball. Why?

College football was not predicated on Cinderella's. There's nothing about, oh, yeah, you're going to see, you know, at least one or two underdogs every bowl season, and they're going to make a run that only lasts about eight days of real time, three games in real life, but we're going to enjoy it and sop it up. Like we've never seen basketball before they played it, right? We've never had that.

Dono, who's the football version of Loyola? Who's the football version? I don't know, TCU. Okay. TCU, a school in the Big 12, a school that's always been a part of one of the power conferences. You get my point? Like, it's just, it's so different.

It's so, who's college football is George Mason when Lared Naga was leaving? Who's that? There's not one. That's my point here. This year, and this is how bad it's gotten with the current format with how college sports is going. This year's Cinderella, do you remember who it was, Dono? Do you remember who people were trying to make the Cinderella this year? I already forgot.

Who was that? The Iowa Hawkeyes. Yeah. you're right. I remember we talked about that. A school in the Big Ten. In the Big Ten that's doing it so big they have, and this is a wonderful thing that they're doing.

I'm not saying this is bad at all. They have one of the most memorable traditions in all of college sports and that the children's hospital that they're funding, the kids come up and they see the players waving at them. All the fans are waving out. That's who the Cinderella was. I don't want a Cinderella that I know your traditions. I know everything about you. I know where your school's located.

I want to feel like, wait a minute, where the hell is CNN had on the map? Wait a minute, wait a minute, wait a minute. You said Radford? Radford? They've done what? You see Irvine. I'm sure somewhere in California, but where is Irvine on the map? I don't know.

Help me point it out. California's a big state. I couldn't find it. And that's my point exactly, Donna. So we're already seeing a situation where we're going to see all of the best players from the mid-majors, and even beyond mid-majors,

just schools without money, even at the power level, their players are getting absorbed up into the halves. And then it triggers the chain effect to where the have-nots, you've got to be the ones actually going out there and doing great high school recruiting because everybody else, they just, oh, great player, Oh, you play well at UNCW?

Come on over here. I got some. I got something for you. Oh, you play great down there at FAU. Come on up to Miami, baby. We got the money. FIU, you don't need to switch your apartment. You can stay in the same apartment and they transfer to Miami.

Come on. So ultimately, expanding a tournament where we're already seen less and less of the Cinderella's. What are we doing this for? What are we doing this for? Media partners. And that's the first thing when I'm reading this Pete Thammell report. NCAA officials met with media partners for the men's tournament last week. The sides were in the final steps of the media contracts per sources, but they had not been signed.

Once the contracts are completed, the NCAA also would need approval from various committees that include the men's and women's basketball committees, the men's and women's basketball oversight committees, the Division I cabinet and the Division I Board of Governors. But again, like the language on this report, it sounds as though they expect to get approval from all of these committees. So the 76 team tournament, I believe, is going to happen just based on the language of that report. Now, in terms of the 24 team football tournament that they're proposing, I don't think we're as far along with that one. But like there's a groundswell of support even coming from a committee that was approved by the White House that's pushing to double. the size of the college football playoff.

But again, I don't think that's like as far along as this is. But if these were to both pass, Kenton, which is worse or which do you dislike more? A 24-team college football playoff or a 76 team men's basketball and women's basketball tournament? 76 and men's are women's. And it's that one by a mile. Let me tell you why. Right now, you're already telling four teams worth of young men. Hey, you all have a date in Dayton, Ohio.

Do you know what time? These are young men and women that have strived their whole lives to be the pinnacle of their sport. And you send them to Dayton as the NCAA. You know, the part of the 76 expansion that I find to be the most flagrant. Yeah. It's going to go from 14. the play in to 12. Yeah, I don't like that at all.

Don't go to 12. Now, of the 12, it's going to work like so. Not only were the four teams being Dayton, they're going to add two more. And then they're going to add the other six to somewhere west of the Eastern Times Zone. I don't even want to know what the central or further West version of Dayton.

in Ohio is. I don't think there is one. I don't just, I want to put this on record. I only recognize one time zone, and that's the Eastern standard time or Eastern Daylight time. I don't mess around with those mountain times and Pacific times, Eastern or die. And you know, I'm not bad at, you don't know, but all I'm saying is anytime that you're saying I'm sending more people to Dayton, Ohio, you need to look in the mirror and say, I'm the bad guy. I'm doing something wrong right now. And I'm not just saying that because I'm a Michigander. Have you ever been to Dayton? There's nothing there.

There's nothing there. Of course you have it, Donno. Nobody's actually big. Why would I go there? Why would you go? Except to watch bad basketball. Why would you go? This is foolishness, man.

Again, with the 2014 playoff, here's the deal, right? Even if we talk about who was the 24th best teams in each of the last few years, at least you got a couple teams that could make it a little exciting or make it a little fun, you know, lower forbid the wrong player get injured on one of the higher-seated teams. you might see some fun stuff. You're starting quarterback. He's gambling. You know?

By the way, I'm glad that they did check that young man into a rehab facility. They said he was at the Reds game betting balls and strikes. You know what? I kind of respect him more after hearing that. I'm not going to lie. But all at all, when I look at this moment and I say, which is worse, it's got to be. to be got to be basketball because before people were arguing about oh who should be in who should be out who got screwed by the committee who didn't yeah if you if i hear your voice if i hear you so

much as mother my team should have and your number 76th hey hey brother hey sister i don't give a damn can't can't bring myself to give a damn about you being called the 77 best team in America. See, I actually think if they were to double the football playoff, I think that's way worse personally for two reasons. Number one, I feel that the difference between the 12th best football team and the 24th best football team is bigger than the difference between the 68th best basketball team and the 76th best basketball team. That's one. And then number two is, and I said this when we talked about the playoff thing last week or two weeks ago, whenever it was. I love the college football regular season.

I also love the playoff. Don't get me wrong, but I love how college football has the most meaningful regular season in sports. And, you know, if you want to talk about making it a 14-teen-team playoff, even 16, it's like, I can live with it. 24 team playoff, I feel like you're, you're destroying the best regular season in sports. Well, Dono, if you're talking about the totality of the impact, which one is worse? Sure, I'll give you, I will a thousand percent grant you 24 football teams is worse. But I'm talking about the actual product in a vacuum of just the product.

24 teams in terms of a college football playoff, you've got to remember. This is not going to be number 24, taking on number one. this is not going to be North Texas led by Mestemaker going into Athens and whatnot. This ain't going to be that. This ain't going to be Miami saying, oh, Akron had themselves a nice little year, best year in their program's history. Well, congratulations. Welcome down to cold cables.

Now, interest you in some Derry and Mensil. Are you interested in learning a little bit of Ruben Bay? Is that something that would interest you today? That's not quite going to be the case. So you're right in saying that 68 is closer to 76, but we're not going to see a ton of wildly, you know, just like these are going to be in the same matchups. And even then, these blowouts that have happened in the college football playoff, I think it's more so a product of coaches not knowing how to deal with something, a stimuli that they've never had to deal with before. We've never had to deal with as long of layoffs into meaningful games as we have. with the playoffs. We've never had to deal with it. And that's why, if you look at the teams that

have had bi-weeks, statistically, people talk about, oh, the best teams in America don't lose in college football. Really? Because I'm looking at something different according to who's getting wins in the playoffs, who's getting two national championships. We're seeing the exact opposite of just, oh, this is chalk across the board. We're seeing if you get that by week, you better be sweating bullets, brother. And meanwhile, we have to pretend. as if the 76 best team in America is somehow going to give Duke a run for their money. I don't know.

Sienna gave Duke a run and they weren't ranked very highly. I don't disagree with you. I don't disagree with you. But guess what? Sienna wasn't 76. Ah, that's true. There you go. Think about that.

That's a good point. When we come back, a new proposal to the NCAA bylaws could actually ensure, that Darien Mensa leaving Duke could never happen again. And what Wisconsin tried to do a couple of years ago with Xavier Lucas could happen. Maybe they call this the Miami rule or the Duke rule or the Wisconsin rule. You want to keep it locked right here on this brand new episode of Locked on ACC.

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Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need to hire? This is a job for sponsored jobs. Folks, I implore you to join the everyday club. If you consume our content every day, we call you an everydayer, and now we have a club just for you. Go to locked on podcast.com slash every dayer. And you can join the everydayer club for any of your favorite shows on this network, including Locked on ACC, Locked on Wolfpack

with Kenton and Grayson, locked on Keynes with me, and you get exclusive content, add free versions of our episodes, newsletters, so many other great features. Go to Lockdownpodcast.com slash everydayer and become an everydayer club member today. Thank you for making LockdowneACC, your first listen. He's Kenton Gibbs, former NC State defensive linemen and co-host of Lockdown Wolfpack. I'm Alex Dono, host of Lockdown Keynes. When I saw Kenton this tweet today from sports lawyer Mitt Winter about this proposed change to the NCAA bylaws, it's like, I can't believe that like nobody seemed to notice this until Mitt noticed it.

He writes, the change to NCAA bylaws, which allows schools to not enter athletes into the portal if a revenue sharing agreement releases the school from the obligation hasn't gotten enough attention. He says schools can now essentially prevent athletes from engaging with other schools during the portal. So what that would mean, Kenton, and like I was a little confused when I saw his tweet, I'm like, has this already passed? I guess it hasn't passed yet, according to the research I've done. But the idea would be that if you have a multi-year revenue-sharing agreement, like what Darien Mensa allegedly had with Duke or, you know, Brendan Sorsby had one of those with Cincinnati that they were suing him to pay a buyout for it, that if you want to leave your school, but you still have a year, two years left on your deal,

the school could then say, well, hey, you sign that contract, we're going to enforce it. We don't have to enter you into the portal. I know a lot of college football fans and certainly a lot of college football administrators, they want this to get passed. And Kenton, if this does pass and that becomes the playing field, I'm fine with that because obviously you guys know I host Locked on Cains. And so I covered, you know, Darian Mentsa leaving Duke despite having another year on his revenue sharing agreement. but at that time, there was nothing legally Duke could do to keep him there, even if he has a marketing agreement. So if that now becomes the playing field for everybody, I'm okay with that. But Kenton, the student athletes and the NIL agents, I'm sure, are not going to be okay with this.

And even if this does pass, they're going to challenge it in court or they're going to try to make sure if you get your client a student athlete, if he signs a revenue sharing deal, you're going to try to put language in that contract that circumvents this because you don't want your guy to be stuck i will say this don't know the music industry for decades has found a way to say hey if you sign with us you can't release uh under anybody else right and they've even taken it as far as for those of you who've ever heard of a 360 deal that means anything that you do right any marketing any like oh you're on a video game and you're getting paid for it the label still gets paid right oh you can't there's nothing you can do about that. Why universities have not already instituted their own version of

that is beyond me, because if we're saying it's not pay for play, that makes it even easier, in my opinion. What do I mean by that? If you and a young man come to an agreement of, hey, there's no pay for play, but for the rights to use your name, image, and likeness, for the next two years, we will pay you this amount. However, if you leave, you need to pay this. amount before you go. That seems like a very clear, straightforward. Hey, that's the buyout. The buyout is the buyout.

If you want this money up front, that's fine. But you got to be willing to pay the buyout if you want to leave. Or even, hey, there is no buyout. If you sign this, you can go play somewhere else. You can go transfer. But you're going to have to play free. Yeah, we give me your $4 million. They're going to have you over there, you know, jacket for beats.

You're going to be down bad. You're going to be, you know, it's going to be real tough. You're going to have to use them mill, swipes. to the utmost on campus. No more eating house coral gables for you, brother. It's going to be all, all noodles and noodles from here on out. So that is something I'm not, I'm surprised. Universities haven't come away, found a way to come with already.

But if the NCAA is stepping in and doing it, it's all the same. It's all the same. Again, I don't mind it. I don't mind it simply because I firmly believe that we've strayed too far. and this is a tangent outside of sports, but especially in sports as well, we strayed too far in terms of nothing has consequences anymore. Things do not have significant ramifications behind it.

If you sign a two-year deal, if a school says the only way we'll sign you is if you sign a two-year deal, and we actually want you more than this other player, but under the condition that you sign the two-year deal, if both of y'all are going for one-year deal and you're going, we're going to go with that other player. That school has to live with the consequence of offering you

instead of that other guy. You then have to live with the consequence of. I've signed a two-year deal. I've signed that. That's what I got to work with. I was recently offered, and I'm not going to talk too much about my personal life here, but I was recently offered a deal

from one of my jobs that I work as a full-time job to, hey, you can stay old with us, we'll give you a substantial bonus, but you have to sign an 18-month non-compete, meaning I could not do recruiting anywhere else, do recruiting people ops, anything of the sort, anywhere else, for a year, year and a half.

And I said, you know what? I'm going to bet on myself and I'm going to see what I can get outside of that. I could have taken that large upfront bonus and say, hey, everything else is going to work out for itself. But I knew there are ramifications if I sign that. There's no ways that I can get around that. So the NCAA having their moment, I don't want to give the NCAA too much credit because every time you give them credit, you know, you pat them on the behind, you pull back

a handful of crap. That's how the NCAA is. Anytime you give them credit, then they come at you with. And we're making the playoffs 76 teams now. I give them credit for this. Next thing, you know, they're going to do something terrible along those lines. So, you know, I'm just living. I'm happy with this, but not going to give you too much credit to you.

Yeah. All right. So when we come back, CBS Sports has updated their post-spring top 25. The ACC does not get quite enough love here, in my opinion. And maybe Texas Tech is still getting a little too much. love. You want to keep it locked. We're not done yet on Locked on ACC. Thank you so much for making Locked on ACC your first listen. So, you know, with CBS sports, when they put together their top 25s, whether it's the way too early or this one is the post-spring

top 25, they have like a data-driven algorithm that they use Kenton. And they even admitted they had to go against their own algorithm in what to do with Texas Tech in light of the Brennan-Sorzby situation and more and more details about his gambling. You're talking about allegedly betting balls and strikes live, which even I think is like, wow, like I wouldn't even go that far. I have bet on Korean League basketball games at five in the morning. And even I think live betting on balls and strikes is a little crazy. Okay. He, you know, reportedly spent $10,000 plus on sports bets, you know, during his freshman year at Indiana. So, It's not the idea of Brandon Soresby ever playing college football again or, you know, professional football is slim to none right now.

Now that, you know, since that's not official yet, it doesn't officially affect their algorithm. But they did drop Texas Tech from number seven to number 11. So now Kenton, Texas Tech has a great roster beyond the quarterback position. And they have a really easy schedule. Like even within the Big 12, they don't play BYU in the. regular season, which is the other, you know, probably the second best team in that league. So I guess you have to weigh the schedule in there, but like, do you really think they only drop four spots without QB1 knowing that they don't really have a viable backup

quarterback? Are they that good beyond the quarterback position? I'm not sure. And, you know, the most interesting thing about this is, is this not something that we've talked about at Nauseant on Lackdon, ACC? Talked about, hey, you need to have a decent backup quarterback. You don't have to be a game breaker. You doesn't have to be great. You got to have somebody serviceable. And now look, right? If you're talking about only dropping four spots, it brings up that interesting question of how do you evaluate a team?

Do you evaluate a team against their schedule? Because against their schedule, you're right. Texas Tech will probably look like one of the best 11 teams in the nation. If we were to put them against the rest of the top 25, however, do you think that they fit in? Or do they stick out like a sore thumb without a quarterback that can you know, functionally get the job done. And mind you, we're not talking about the new greatness.

Legitimately, who is their quarterback going to be? Who? Who's the guy? You know, so it's a very interesting situation. And do I think that they're getting too much love? I mean, depending on the metrics that you're using, whatever your little data-driven algorithm tells you, right? If it tells you, if you are, or whatever you put into it, rather,

because one thing about AI and all that and all this data that people seem to forget, I work in tech folks and I'm here to tell you these algorithms and all that, the data pushes out what you tell it or it pushes things out to you based on what you want to know, right? So if Dono and I were to say, who are the most handsome hosts on Locked on ACC? And one of the criteria that we named was the amount of hair on the top of your head, Dono and I would not be in the top 10. It would not be in the top 10, right? Right. But if we said, hey, who's got some of the fullest moustaches and whatnot, right?

We could easily end up right back there because, hey, both of us, you know what I'm we all right. We are right in the fashion area of the part. So it's the reality of what is actually valued here. Because depending on how that's, what it looks like, it makes sense. If you are saying, hey, lacking continuity, lacking the returning starting quarterback, lacking a proven quarterback means a lot to our algorithm, then you've done some. something incredibly wrong by not accounting for the fact that Brandon Soresby is legitimately

a degenerate, not just in the way that I joke and call betters degenerates, right? Like, yeah, Donald may have bet once or twice on how many Bowles Red Panda was going to drop on that night. He may have done it once or twice, but it wasn't live at the game doing it. Do you want to know real quick story? The craziest thing I ever wagered on and won, by the way. It was during a presidential debate, what color tie one of the candidates would wear to the presidential debate. I won. Mm. Yeah.

Sorsby, your move, all right? Let's see what you got. But see, Donald, you can't compete with Sosby, okay? They said that he was placing thousands of bets per year. And average of $2,000 per year. You can't. I can't compete. I can't.

You got a wife and kid who love you, okay? If you can compete with that, go talk to the lady. You know what I'm talking about. Go sell that therapist scouts and let it scream at you a little bit because you got, you got issues. You got issues, man. But no, in all seriousness, I don't think that there should have been a ton of movement post-spring, but I do think, again, depending on what this little system of theirs was indexing for, Texas Tech has a ton of talent. They've got a ton of talent. But they've also lost a lot.

They've lost first-round draft picks. they've lost a quarterback, a $5 million quarterback, how can you say that they were at top 11, that they are a top 11 team? You know, how can you say that with all in good faith, knowing what you know about what this team is missing, knowing what you know about what this team lost from last year, knowing what you know about the fact that they're going to be walking in a situation

where their quarterback has not thrown a pass to his guys at all going into the season. That's dice him. Yeah, well, so I want to pick up on this tomorrow. So in their in their post-spring top 25, there's only two teams from the ACC in there. So I don't think that reflects reality. I think there should be at least three in their top 25. So I want to get to that. Make sure you check out Kenton at Lockdown Wolfpack.

And spoiler alert, his Wolfpack did not make their top 25. The team I cover may or may not have. But check out Kenton at TGIF underscore Kenton. And on Lockdown Wolfpack, you can check me out on Locked on Cains at Alex Dono. And we'll talk to you next time on another episode of Lockdown ACCC. We are part of the number one Lockdown Podcast Network, your team every day.