The topic of NCAA Tournament expansion comes up frequently, but it’s evidently picking up steam right now, as in the fallout of moderate support from it at power conference men’s basketball media days, college basketball insider Jon Rothstein has now tweeted the following:
There’s a lot we could get into here, from the expansion of Division I (not that fast, in recent years, and the number of conferences hasn’t much changed) to the quality gap between the best teams and the last at-large bids (which has also, per KenPom, stayed roughly constant, implying better teams are not being kept out). But it’s Rothstein’s second report we’ll hone in on here, because it gives us the best read on the tea leaves:
“There’s a strong sentiment that expanding the Men’s Basketball NCAA Tournament is different because of its uniqueness.”
A lot of factors make the men’s basketball NCAA Tournament unique, but the overarching one is this: It makes money. It makes almost all of the NCAA’s money. Before you close this tab: This isn’t a “Hey dummy, they’re obviously going to expand because it’s all about money” post. They aren’t obviously going to expand. But all the things that make the men’s basketball NCAA Tournament unique also make it a big moneymaker for the NCAA and, in a variety of direct and indirect ways, the schools involved. At the end of the day, money will probably win out. But that doesn’t mean expansion will necessarily win out. Here’s why:
For as much of a moneymaker as the NCAA Tournament is, it doesn’t exist in a vacuum. A larger NCAA Tournament would mean more games and probably more total revenue, but it might not mean more revenue per school involved, and it may come at the expense of revenue elsewhere in school’s individual seasons. Consider two things:
First, revenue-per-game will likely drop if the NCAA Tournament expands, for the same reasons that Final Four games have higher ratings than individual Second Round games. More teams means lower-quality competition, less compelling characters, etc. You can grow the whole pie, but not fast enough to keep up on a per-slice basis.
Second, an expanded postseason may reduce the length of the regular season or certain conference tournaments by a game. It might not—the NCAA might allow the effective length of the basketball season to extend—but concerns always bounce around about how much workload is being placed on kids, and in basketball, unlike College Football Playoff-relevant football, even in the NIL era there are a lot of kids not getting paid. If kids aren’t getting paid, it’s riskier (and, you know, a worse thing to do) to heighten the possibility of injury.
Schools make a lot of money from regular season games, and from conference tournaments. Especially the schools who make decisions. It’s unclear how this balances out compared to potential NCAA Tournament revenue, but if an expansion proposal is done in certain ways (e.g., if it formally excludes sub-.500 teams from consideration and reduces the length of the regular season by a game), it may reduce projected revenues for too many programs to be worth the upside.
Of course, this isn’t the only thing that will make the decision. There are legitimate attachments to tradition and to the quality of competition, and there are legitimate questions about the NCAA’s ability to persist in its existence, and ideally there’ll be some focus group experiments done where they try to figure out if people don’t often watch the NIT because it’s the NIT (not us, couldn’t be us) or because the teams aren’t good enough to enjoyably watch. But expansion isn’t some lever that prints money. It’ll benefit some more than others. It may benefit some at the expense of others. It will come with uncertainty, and that will be a risk. The money matters. It’s fair to assume it’s driving the whole decision. But what that means for the actual matter at hand is not perfectly straightforward.
The Padres Are Alive
It looked, early on yesterday, like the San Diego Padres’ season was on its way to being over. Trailing 1-0 in the series and 4-0 in the game with one of the best pitchers in baseball on the mound for the visitors, the Pads were on track to take a 2-0 deficit with them to Philadelphia, where they’d then need to take two of three to even just get the series back to California. Then, trade deadline pickups Brandon Drury and Josh Bell hit back-to-back home runs, making it a 4-2 game, and after Blake Snell rallied to contribute three good innings of work, the offense rallied as well, stringing together hits just like they did against the Dodgers (in defiance of the last shifts baseball will see for a while) to take the lead, take the game, and take the series to Pennsylvania very much knotted up in a 50/50 affair.
There is so much to be said for the Padres’ approach to roster construction these last few years. They’ve done everything we complain about other teams not doing, which is to say they’ve tried to win. Yesterday, it worked. Yesterday, they won. And this is suddenly a hell of a series, with perfectly even odds in the betting markets I’m seeing and a 49.9%/50.1% split on Dan Szymborski’s ZiPS (it leans towards the Padres). Two big cities, two franchises that have consistently tried to compete, one great NLCS out of which we can only assume the winner will emerge as the emotional favorite in the World Series.
Across the way, the Astros held off the Yankees, for whom Jameson Taillon dodged trouble but Clarke Schmidt couldn’t, the pair not striking out a single batter in more than five innings of work while Justin Verlander went six and axed eleven. It was fortunate for New York that the score was closer, but it also doesn’t really matter: The game went to the Astros.
As we said yesterday in at least one spot, this wasn’t a terrible loss for the Yanks. The assumption was that they would lose. This was their worst expected pitching matchup of the series and it took place on the other team’s field and it took place with the other team rested and the Yankees not rested. It would’ve been nice for them to steal it, but this doesn’t move the needle as much as it would have were the game a 50/50 affair to begin with.
That said, the Astros are clearly on top in this series, and the Yankees don’t fully have their backs against the wall tonight—they head home after this game, and Gerrit Cole pitching Game 3 gives them a clear path to trailing only 2-1, a manageable deficit—but when you’re as big an underdog as the Yankees are, falling behind 2-0 can feel like a death sentence, and you’d always prefer to not have to win your most winnable game. It’d be nice to have that be an opportunity to take a series lead.
A Good Start for the Bulls
It was just one game, but the Bulls beat the Heat last night in Miami, and that’s not a small deal. Most impressively, Ayo Dosunmu played a great game.
Dosunmu’s importance is heightened as the Bulls await the return of Lonzo Ball, but even beyond Ball’s return, it’s a big deal. At one threshold, Dosunmu proving a capable NBA starting point guard on a playoff team would make it that much easier to trade Coby White. At another, how high is his ceiling? A second-year player and just 22 years old, Dosunmu’s far from a known quantity. So far, there’s no reason to think he’ll be better than Ball (who’s only 24, even if he’s been in the discourse a lot longer thanks to surging earlier in college), but the possibility’s at least there.
Trying
Same to-do’s as yesterday on my side:
- Re-launch Gelo for 2022-23 NHL season (and get up to speed on NHL season to-date)
- Get conference tiebreakers into college football model
- Get these notes caught up on the MLB offseason (which is happening) and the NHL/NFL/NBA seasons (which are also happening, allegedly)
- Catch up on college football futures
- Catch up on soccer futures
- Start NHL, NBA futures
- Build out college basketball models for 2022-23 (both men’s & women’s)
**
Viewing schedule, second screen in italics:
MLB
- 7:37 PM EDT: New York (AL) @ Houston – Game 2, Severino vs. Valdez (TBS)
NFL
- 8:15 PM EDT: New Orleans @ Arizona (Prime Video)
NBA
- 7:30 PM EDT: Milwaukee @ Philadelphia (TNT)
- 10:00 PM EDT: LA Clippers @ LA Lakers (TNT)
NHL (best guess at biggest game)
- 7:00 PM EDT: Dallas @ Toronto (ESPN+)
