The NCAA tournament is about to get ruined. | Page 3 | The Boneyard

The NCAA tournament is about to get ruined.


Yuck. Watering it down with barely over .500 teams like Mississippi State and Penn State just to get more power conference teams in is almost as bad as eliminating the auto bid.
 

I wish Sankey nothing but the worse. Greedy [insert expletive here]. Don't they get enough money from ruining college sports with football? Does he really need to screw up the NCAA Tournament too?
 
I wish Sankey nothing but the worse. Greedy [insert expletive here]. Don't they get enough money from ruining college sports with football? Does he really need to screw up the NCAA Tournament too?

I understand the sentiment, but he's simply doing his job. His job is to represent the conference and its members and a big part of that is optimizing the financial take for those members. The construct of college athletics is now fully that of professional franchises. That train has left the station and there is no turning back.
 
SEC commissioner Greg Sankey made waves recently by suggesting major changes to the March Madness format. Ensor has known Sankey, who hails from upstate New York and once helmed a mid-major conference, for decades.

“He says things like that because he’s got people he’s got to deal with,” Ensor said. “He doesn’t want to mess with the basketball tournament.”

As Ensor pointed out, what really irked Sankey was perceived slights against the SEC by the NCAA baseball tournament selection committee (college baseball is huge in the southeast). The inference: rattle your saber about the basketball tournament, get your way with baseball tournament expansion.

“It’s a leverage thing,” Ensor said.
...
(High-major commissioners) hear that from their media partners, by the way -- ‘Don’t mess with something that’s working really well.' These schools keep it interesting, otherwise those first couple of rounds would be boring.”
 
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While I don’t see an end to the current auto bid format anytime soon (maybe optimistically) there is a pretty clear path for the BIG and SEC to destroy the NCAA tournament. And it may just happen as collateral damage is the attempt to breakaway / negotiating over more power for football.

Yes, the NCAA tournament makes the NCAA $1B every year. But in 2019 only $170 million was actually paid out to the conferences / schools in it. NCAA kept the rest (I assume to “support” other non-revenue sports)

Even if the BIG and SEC currently gets 50% of that (they don’t), that’s only $65 million.

It’s not crazy to think a new tournament could fetch more than that for the super conferences if they took it to market. Even if they set aside some money to payout other non-super conference schools who participate.
If your goal is getting more money from a goose that lays golden eggs killing it is not the way you go about it . You may just end up with a down pillow.
The solution is to get more golden eggs
A current NCAA unit about $350,000
so an intelligent person will look at that and say there are two ways to get more golden eggs

1 increase the annual unit
2 increase the number of units my conference earns
It’s really not as complicated as you think
A Quick examination tells you that 1/2 the net proceeds let’s say $400,000,000 are distributed between 1500 member institutions. Almost any number divided by 1500 become insignificant into today world.
By just eliminating that distribution adds that total to the current $170,000,000 increasing each unit worth to over $1,000,000 each that’s a huge windfall without even a tweek to the tourney.
 
Listen I love the NCAA tournament just as much as anyone else but it has ruined the regular season & the importance of it. Adding more teams will just make the regular season worse.
 
Listen I love the NCAA tournament just as much as anyone else but it has ruined the regular season & the importance of it. Adding more teams will just make the regular season worse.
Right. With rare exceptions regular season games for major and P5 leagues are completely meaningless. They are basically 20 games to seed an equally meaningless league tournament. If you add more at large teams it just means it becomes even more meaningless.
 
Never have things been so money driven, and things have always been money driven.
 
These idiots will ruin anything. The bracket, as is (we could probably do without the "first four," but fine, leave it), is one of the finest, most-anticipated, and well-devised sporting events ever. I haven't felt the need to protest much in my life, but I'd be leading the charge to the doors of NCAA HQ if they go messing with it. Although I would NOT go all Jan.6 style...let's not get carried away. I would get rid of league tourneys and spice up regular season match ups.
 
These idiots will ruin anything. The bracket, as is (we could probably do without the "first four," but fine, leave it), is one of the finest, most-anticipated, and well-devised sporting events ever. I haven't felt the need to protest much in my life, but I'd be leading the charge to the doors of NCAA HQ if they go messing with it. Although I would NOT go all Jan.6 style...let's not get carried away. I would get rid of league tourneys and spice up regular season match ups.
I don’t think NCAA headquarters is calling the shots.
 
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97% of the roughly 100 coaches polled by CBSSports.com said leave the qualifying bids as they are. Interesting. You might think more P5 coaches would say no more automatic bids which gives their school a better chance of qualifying each year.

Great article. I agree with all of it. They need to leave the format alone.
 
People tend to overuse the phrase "This will ruin the sport!" whenever there is a new rule or format introduced.

That being said, making big changes to the NCAA tournament would absolutely ruin the sport.
 
Listen I love the NCAA tournament just as much as anyone else but it has ruined the regular season & the importance of it.
I don't think I agree. Every game a team plays is scrutinized to determine who gets in the Dance and where they are seeded once in.
 

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