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Media & Entertainment Law

: Sports Biz

Is A Bigger March Madness A Better March Madness?

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Springtime in Indianapolis usually turns Hoosier thoughts to crankcases and drivetrains but this year, the Indy 500 will have to wait until May. The hometown Butler Bulldogs have made the national championship game and Naptown is all abuzz. However, the lobbies of the hotels near Lucas Oil Stadium are not filled with talk about Butler or Duke, but about the effects of a 96 team NCAA tournament, as it becomes increasingly apparent that the NCAA intends to opt out of its contract with CBS and expand the "perfect" tournament from 65 schools to 96. According to the format floated to the media by interim NCAA president Jim Isch, the tournament will still be played within its same three week window.

One supposed benefit of an expanded tournament is additional opportunities for tournament participation to be afforded to the schools commonly referred to as mid-major or low major, but are just not the top eight conferences which currently take home 71% of the basketball revenue. If the tournament expands, it is likely to absorb the 32 team NIT, so we could examine the NIT field for the last couple of seasons to see how adding those teams to the NCAA field would alter the revenue distribution. Remember, the NCAA distributes basketball revenue on a per unit basis, by conference, with one unit for each team that makes the tournament field and an additional unit for each game won until the Final Four.

Adding this year's NIT field would have resulted in giving the power conferences the following additional units:

ACC 10

Big East 7

Big Ten 4

Big XII 3

SEC 6

Pac-10 1

CUSA 6

A-10 10

The CAA and the MVC would each get 2 units while no other conference would get more than one. The idea that any schools other than the members of the power conferences would benefit from expansion is just another myth being peddled by the power conferences to enhance their control over the NCAA and Division I athletics. In truth, the gap between richer and poorer would only grow larger and larger and the arms race would continue as new money flowed into the larger athletic programs who would continue to compete over facilities and coaches.

Expansion of the tournament really serves no true purpose nor does it fill any unmet need. The power conferences are firmly in control now and don't need to enhance their position. There is no need to tamper with the one thing that the NCAA has done right (other than to either get rid of the play-in game or make the last two at-large teams play in it) for the sake of a higher TV contract that will go disproportionately to the schools that don't really need it anyway. Let's keep the Madness on the court.

Full post as published by Sports Biz on April 05, 2010 (boomark / email).