What is the point of the NCAA tournament? Most people answer that question simply and say that it exists to find the best team in college basketball, but that is not exactly it. Were that true, teams would play one another multiple times in some postseason round-robin format that has yet to be conceived. The reality is, the college basketball postseason exists as a cutthroat and inherently unfair single-elimination tournament purely to find the hottest team in the country. Who is playing the best right now? Fairness is not on the tournament committee’s mind—entertainment is, and the current 68-team structure provides the best product. The tournament capitalizes off the rhythmic nature of teams, pitting those with high expectations against those with nothing to lose, hoping for a good dose of upsets to keep ratings up. These upsets are why this period of the basketball season is so commonly called March Madness, but this year was a little different, and analysts are pointing fingers.
This season’s tournament was undoubtedly mundane in the upset sense, with higher seeds having dramatically more success than in previous years. The Elite Eight had all four one seeds, three No. 2 seeds and one No. 3 seed in it, with each of the No. 1 seeds advancing to the Final Four for the first time since 2008. Even in the Sweet Sixteen, there was only one double-digit seeded team alive, and it was a scrappy Arkansas team that was far from being a true “Cinderella story”—though they are definitely worthy of their own article. This was certainly a rarity for the industry, and with bracket prediction and betting being at the heart of the modern college basketball discourse, everyone is left wondering if this is a sign of changing times.
In June 2021, four seasons ago, The U.S. Supreme Court ruled that college athletes should have the ability to profit off of their Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL), defeating the “amateurism” argument that had plagued the industry for decades. Schools could no longer pay anyone directly, but they now received a portion of the proceeds from their jersey sales in addition to things like advertising deals that companies could work with a university to facilitate. As a result of this and similar rulings, the NCAA was forced to change the way that transferring schools for athletics worked, allowing athletes to transfer and play for their new school immediately the next season. Previously, transfers were forced to sit out a year to disincentivize it. Now, swapping teams for a larger NIL paycheck is a legitimate reality for the more talented and thus more highly sought after players.
Many analysts are pointing to this transfer system as to blame for this year’s less entertaining tournament outcome, questioning whether NIL will be the death of the Cinderella story as we know it. To give them credit, they have somewhat of an argument. Many of the most talented players of the last few years at mid-major programs—teams that are not in one of the five major “power conferences”—have transferred out and up immediately after making a name for themselves, frequently for a high paycheck. Big fish that ended up in small ponds can now move to bigger ponds for more food access. You cannot blame them for taking advantage of that opportunity, and more are doing it every year, with over 800 players entering the portal this season on its first day. Some even did so while their season was still alive, such as Michigan’s Justin Pippen, son of NBA legend and avid Michael Jordan hater Scottie Pippen, who had a Sweet Sixteen game against Auburn just two days later. It is clear that the transfer portal is out of control under its current rules, and it is easy to deflect blame onto it as a result, but there is really no way to create a strong connection between the portal and this year’s tournament outcome.
Just a year ago, the modern system was being pointed to as the pinnacle of college basketball, with the last four tournaments having some of the most upsets and best stories that the country has ever seen. Whether it was through No. 11 seed North Carolina State making the Final Four last year, No. 11 seed UCLA doing the same four years ago, or the fact that zero No. 1 seeds made the Elite Eight two years ago, March Madness has appeared aptly named in recent history. Moreso, the only two times in history that a No. 16 seed beat a No. 1 seed in the first round happened in the last seven years, contributing to the idea that these increased levels of craziness are the norm. The pendulum swung on the side of upsets for several years in a row, and despite all of the reactionary press that has been put out in the last two weeks, what happened this year is more than likely a similar statistical anomaly to what has been seen recently, just in the other direction.
Even if this March’s Madness is not just a statistical anomaly, things may just go back to the way they used to be after the NCAA has had time to adjust to the portal. Arkansas Hall of Fame Head Coach John Calipari said on the Pat McAfee Show recently that, “There are kids in the United States that are freshmen, that deserve scholarships to college that aren’t getting them. We’re all waiting for transfers.” The aforementioned highly skilled mid-major transfers are flooding the recruiting market right now, and thus talented high school players are being left behind at Power Five programs across the country. Hundreds of incredibly talented kids who would normally find themselves blossoming after a few years at a major program are no longer getting in, forcing them to look elsewhere to play basketball, opening the window for these supposedly dying mid-major programs to stay afloat with new talent. The reign of the upset might take a small hiatus for a few years, but with all of this scrappy young talent now having to take the gritty mid-major path to the top, I have no doubt that March will remain mad.