CAA March Madness is in full swing as the Elite 8 is underway and the final stretch of the men’s college basketball season is among us. A major theme that has been talked about throughout the tournament is that upset games/smaller schools winning is becoming increasingly more uncommon, and I cannot help but think that the implementation of Name Image and Likeness (NIL) plays a major role in this.
In the 2025 March Madness. the Final Four was made up of all 1-seeds. Flash forward to this year and all that remain are three 1-seeds, one 2-seed, one 3-seed, and one 6-seed. All of the schools remaining are known for being big schools with large budgets and donors, allowing them to take advantage of NIL.
The 2025 March Madness tournament was made up of a Final Four that only included 1-seeds, and historically good college basketball programs. According to Yahoo sports, last year was the first year since 2017 that no 13-seed or higher won a first round game, and the same thing happened this year. This is only the seventh time this has happened in the history of March Madness.
I think that the major cause for this is the implementation of NIL. So many recruits and transfer players choose the program they want to play at based on the financial aspects now, and smaller schools do not have the same resources that bigger ones do, making it harder for them to compete on a national level.
In my opinion, and I would assume most people’s, one of the beautiful aspects of March Madness is the chance that a small school can compete against schools like Duke, Kansas, and North Carolina and have the chance to beat them. The NCAA Tournament has a rich history of major upsets and “Cinderella teams” but that seems to be dying.
I believe that when money was not involved, smaller schools had a better chance at acquiring good players because things like development and playing time mattered more and were not taking a backseat to money. I cannot convince myself that all of this is just a coincidence and that underdog teams and upsets will be back next year.
The entire landscape of college athletics has changed and we are seeing that displayed in March Madness. I am not saying that NIL is a negative thing, and I do believe that college athletes should be paid, but is it ruining the sport that we always loved?
I personally think that if smaller schools had a bigger budget than this trend would level out and we would see more parody in college basketball. Historically, higher seeds win more games and national championships, but barely any upsets taking place is not what we expect from the NCAA tournament.
To be completely honest, I am not sure what the solution is, but I miss the tournaments where 15-seeds beat 2-seeds and even 16-seeds getting the ultra-rare win over 1-seeds. These upsets just make the tournament more entertaining and makes the sport what it is in my opinion.
NIL is here to stay but I am sad to say that I think it is negatively impacting March Madness forever.
