Broaden the field.

“I think the only way it gets fixed is you gotta expand. You gotta go to probably 16 [teams],” the college and pro football analyst told TMZ Sports on Tuesday.

The field currently consists of 12 teams … but Kirk thinks adding four squads is the way to go moving forward.

Herbstreit also addressed the “Group of 5” — five non-Power 4 conferences — consisting of the American Athletic (AAC), Conference USA (C-USA), Mid-American (MAC), Mountain West, and Sun Belt conferences, which are currently guaranteed one bid.

He believes that’s got to change.

“The other thing is, I think the Group of 5, while it’s great to have them involved, I feel like they have to get to a certain ranking to be able to qualify to be able to get in,” Herbstreit said.

“Nothing against those stories. We all love the Cinderella story, but I just think when you leave Texas, when you leave Notre Dame, when you leave Vandy, when you leave BYU out, the goal was to get the best 16 teams in my opinion into the tournament, not try to make everyone happy.”

“If you qualify, great, if you don’t, you’re out. And I think hopefully this year will get us closer to taking those steps.”

Of course, that won’t be any consolation to the teams who feel they were screwed, and especially Notre Dame, which hasn’t made any bones about how upset they are by the snub.

In fact, ND opted to pull itself from Bowl contention, meaning the season is officially over for the men in South Bend.