March Badness
How NIL has broken March Madness.
Death. Taxes. Broken brackets. These are the three guarantees of life - at least for those that succumb to the college basketball hype that hits every spring.
No one has ever filled out a perfect bracket, and it’s most likely that no one ever will (the odds are 1 in 9 quintillion). You can also reliably bet on at least one “Cinderella” to make it to the second weekend. This year, while there are, yet again, no remaining perfect brackets, no reasonable person’s bracket is particularly busted. And there’s one big reason why.
Brief shoutout to the Arkansas (10) vs Texas Tech (3) Sweet 16 game for being the first game all tournament to go to OT.
Q: Who’s the Cinderella team in 2025?
A: No one.
If there’s any other constant in life that I didn’t mention above, it would be the fact that there will be a half-dozen legitimate* upsets in the first round of March Madness. This year, there were only 3: McNeese, Drake, and Colorado State. However, all three would promptly be shown the door by Purdue, Texas Tech, and Maryland, all 3 or 4 seeds who had successfully vanquished their 13 or 14 seed matchups in the first round.
*Legitimate meaning an 11 seed or higher winning in the first round.
The best chance for a double-digit seed to make it to the Sweet 16 is to face another double-digit seed in the second round. It’s hard for that to happen when there are so few first round upsets. So many “Cinderellas” - and broken brackets - are borne by two different upsets happening next to each other in the same region.
Now, how does this affect the bracket challenge? After all, that’s what everyone is here for anyway.
In one way, it makes for more competitive brackets; as long as you pick a relatively ‘chalk’ bracket, you should be a contender until your chosen champion is eliminated.
In another way, it makes everything a lot less fun. I’ll never forget watching FGCU beating Georgetown in the back of my history class. While that predated 1 seeds ever being upset (as multiple have been since), it still feels like that is a bygone era. This year, 1 seeds triumphed over 16 seeds by an average of 32 points; 2 seeds beat 15 seeds by an average of 20 points. The closest of all of these matchups was decided by 9 points (Alabama vs Robert Morris).
Now, the 1 and 2 seeds are traditionally expected for blowouts; they are immediate write-ins on any bracket. However, over the last 20 years, there have been significantly more 11-14 upsets than there were this year.
Why?
College sports have gone through a tremendous amount of change over the last few years. The transfer portal has provided athletes a seamless route to change schools, while in the past, such a change would have sacrificed a whole season of eligibility. Then, NIL really shook things up. All of a sudden, there was even more incentive to move to big, rich schools to play sports. Not only can they provide prestige, they can also provide money - whether directly paid to the athlete or through media coverage which raises the value of players on the secondary market.
Is this good or bad for college sports in general? I don’t know, though I do think the system has many oppotunities for improvement. But ultimately, no matter how optimized the payment system is, no matter how few or many restrictions are put on the payment structure, being paid to play inevitably will draw the best players from mid-majors to Power-5 conference teams.
Is this a good or bad thing? It is impossible to tell. In my opinion the NIL/Portal structure is broken but it is able to be fixed. However, even in the best case scenario interesting bracket scenarios and “Cinderellas” have gone the way of the dodo.