The men’s college basketball season is already plenty long. Apparently, some coaches want that season to be longer.
Recently, ESPN’s Sean Farnham did an appearance on BYUtv and talked about a recent trip to Las Vegas for a charity golf tournament. He was asked about a variety of college basketball issues, and he brought up scheduling. What he learned during the tournament has the potential to be massive for the sport.
“There’s a growing sense among the coaches that I spoke to that they’d like to see the schedule beefed up to about 40 games in the regular season,” he said.
What? A 40-game regular season? How? So, instead of overreacting, I tried to figure it out.
THE REGULAR SEASON AS OF NOW
Did you know there are rules for creating a college basketball schedule? The NCAA has easy-to-understand language (for once). Per the NCAA:
“Currently, men’s and women’s basketball teams can schedule 28 games with an additional three-game, multiple-team event, for a maximum of 31 games. Teams can also choose to schedule 29 games with a two-game, multiple-team event, again with a 31-game maximum. Or teams can schedule 29 regular-season games without a multiple-team event included.”
The NCAA is considering a flat 32 games starting in 2026-27.
Here’s an easy way of looking at it, since Iowa State’s non-conference schedule is already out:
The breakdown? There are 13 non-conference games — 10 scheduled and the Cyclones will get three at the Players Era Tournament. Then, ISU plays 18 Big 12 games. That’s 31 games.
Simple. Love it. Why change it?
WHY 40 GAMES?
One of Farnham’s reasons was that he heard coaches want to go back to true double round-robin schedules. That’s what the Big 12 used to do before it expanded from 10 teams.
If the Big 12 tried that now, well, that would be the entire schedule. No one’s gonna go for that. So, you must expand the schedule.
With a true double round-robin for the Big 12 — 30 games (everyone plays everyone twice) — that leaves 10 non-conference games to play with in a 40-game schedule.
HOW WOULD THIS WORK?
Farnham suggested you really can’t start the schedule any earlier than November. This year, the season starts on Nov. 3. So, let’s start there.
November: Play 10 non-conference games. This year, teams have 27 days to play 10 games, which would include some kind of multi-team event (most of them happen over Thanksgiving). Some teams play three games in a week in November. It is doable. One week with three games. Two weeks with two games each. One week with a three-game MTE. That’s 10 games.
December: Start Big 12 play. This is tricky because not everyone aligns when it comes to finals and graduation. But, generally, Big 12 action shuts down around Dec. 20 and resumes around Dec. 30. ISU plays its last two non-conference games on Dec. 21 and resumes on Dec. 29.
So, I would give Big 12 teams from Dec. 1-21 to play six league games. Then everyone gets a 10-day break. Play resumes Dec. 30 with a full slate. So, seven league games in December.
January-March: The remaining 23 league games. The first set of games would be Jan. 2, a Saturday. From there, it’s two games a week for 11 straight weeks. That takes the season to March 21. Sorry, the bye week in league play must go.
Farnham figured it would add two weeks to the regular season. He was right.
WHAT ABOUT THE BIG 12 TOURNAMENT?
I think this is a good question. The Big 12 Tournament would be the week after the end of the regular season, in this case ending on March 28. Does the league really need a tournament after a 30-game conference season in which everyone plays everyone twice? Couldn’t we, at that point, just give the auto bid to the best team? It’s something to ponder. The Big 12 won’t like losing revenue.
But let’s say we have a Big 12 Tournament after all of that. It would end on March 28.
THE NCAA TOURNAMENT
The NCAA Tournament would start the following week, and instead of March Madness, we would have April Madness. The tournament would pretty much take up the whole month. It would compete with the start of baseball season, the Masters, and whatever else is going on at that time.
SHOULD THE SCHEDULE BE EXPANDED?
No. I worry about player wear-and-tear. I worry about travel. I worry about taking the best postseason tournament in sports and taking it out of its perfect perch. There is so much of this I don’t like. I’m not sure what these coaches are thinking, but they should bag it.
There is more than enough college basketball to go around. We don’t need a longer regular season.
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
