This is 100% bragging, but I am currently leading my NCAA Tournament office pool of 29 people. Not tied for first, but singularly ahead of the field after two rounds. And I have my entire final four and seven of my elite eight still alive, meaning I’ve got a huge range of points ahead of me. For reference, I’m in the 99th percentile on the ESPN Bracket contest. I’m not sure I’ve been the 99th percentile anything. So I’m pretty proud of myself.
It's entirely possible I shouldn’t be. Not because I did anything wrong or haven’t earned my standing, but because making winning picks might have been a bit easier this year than most. See, usually picking the tournament correctly means somehow predicting wild upsets, like when St. Peters went to the Elite Eight in 2022 as a 15 seed, or when 16th seeded FDU beat number one seed Purdue the following year. And you have to somehow prognosticate which of the favorites will underperform despite a low seed and a seemingly easy path. That’s the madness of march, and why most people’s brackets look like a fevered dream by the second weekend.
But not this year. For the Sweet 16, we’ve still got all four one seeds and three twos. There’s only one team above a six seed, and it’s 10th seeded Arkansas of the SEC, led by one of the most legendary coaches in NCAA history. No 12 seeds like we usually see. No George Mason, no Princeton, no VCU. In fact, all 16 remaining teams come from the four power conferences, led by six from the SEC. Which makes picking a reasonably accurate bracket much easier, assuming you don’t get too cute and largely stick to the favorites. Which is kind of what I did, with three ones and a two seed in my Final Four. Which is how I’ve come to lead a medium sized office pool and have three full days of shameless trash talk.
A few things to discuss. First, while I may have benefited from the Goliaths taking care of business, so did everyone else. And I did manage to pick more of the few upsets than everyone else. I went 15-1 on day one, my only loss a vanity Yale pick. So we’re playing by the same rules here. Second, and more importantly, this isn’t just a story of favorites actually living up to their records. This is more about the ongoing shift in college athletics, where power teams from power conferences increasingly play a different game on and off the court from their less powerful brethren. Part of the beauty of the NCAA basketball tournament is that it allowed, even encouraged for smaller programs to make a run. We’re not that far removed from Butler going to two straight NCAA finals. This year, not a single Big East team is left standing past the first week, not to mention anyone from Butler’s previous conference. That’s a seismic shift from what was once an event largely branded around Cinderella stories – or as Gus Johnson once famously said after another Gonzaga win, the slipper still fits.
Perhaps now it’s a bit tight. That’s because teams like Florida and Duke and Auburn can leverage all kinds of NIL money and the wild west of the transfer portal to suck all the talent out of the mid-major conferences. It used to be that lesser teams could hang with the big boys because they’d enroll juniors and seniors, while places like Kentucky would have to try and win with freshman in a holding pen until joining the NBA. Now, SEC and Big 10 schools can simply find the best upperclassmen and give them a better contract, for lack of better wording. Florida’s all everything senior point guard Walter Clayton Jr. spent his first two years at Iona. So where it used to be young stars vs. experienced veterans, now they all end up in the same place. And rich universities can reload every summer in what amounts to the world’s most unregulated free agency market.
In a related twist, St. Francis College just announced it would be dropping from Division I to Division III after making the tournament this year for the first time ever. They said it was simply impossible to keep up – and used something about the student experience as an excuse, understandably. They’re likely getting out at the right time, assuming they had any intentions of ever winning or not going broke.
As for me, I’m just happy to be in first.
Keith Strudler is the Dean of the School of Communication and Media at Montclair State University. You can follow him at @KeithStrudler.
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