Sports

The NCAA Is Making Unpopular Decisions at Exactly the Wrong Time

With March Madness expansion and a possible College Football Playoff expansion, the NCAA is ignoring fans right when its popularity matters most in Congress.

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A player in an Oklahoma Sooners basketball jersey is dribbling near a player in a Texas A&M Aggies jersey—in the background is a basketball hoop and fans sitting in the stands. | Photo: Matthew Maxey/Icon Sportswire DHH/Matthew Maxey/Icon
(Photo: Matthew Maxey/Icon Sportswire DHH/Matthew Maxey/Icon)

Hello and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! Bring your spaghetti in and take a seat, we've got a full newsletter today.

This newsletter often looks at people whining about change and tells them to get over it. This time, I think the people complaining about changes to NCAA sports have a point. We'll get into the March Madness and College Football Playoff expansions, as well as legislation regulating the NCAA. Plus, we'll close with a less-serious bit about golf.

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Nobody Wanted This (Basketball Edition)

March Madness is growing from 68 teams to 76 teams for both men and women, even though no one asked for this—not fans, anyway. The vast majority of public sentiment has been against expansion, while conference leaders and coaches have pushed for expansion (it's a lot harder to get fired if your mediocre team somehow slides into the tournament).

In the new format, the 12 worst at-large teams and 12 worst automatic qualifiers will all play in the "March Madness Opening Round" (who can resist sexy branding like that?). That doesn't just mean teams that had been left out will now make play-in games; it also means teams that previously would have started in the round of 64 will now have to go through a play-in to make the "real" bracket. Under the most recent format, 60 teams started in the round of 64—the new format lowers this to 52, putting more teams in play-in precarity and forcing them to streak to seven wins for a national championship instead of the typical six. Also, more mid-major schools will swallow each other up in play-in games instead of getting to face off against higher seeds in the "real" bracket.

The motivation for the change, as usual, is money—and at Free Agent, we generally don't begrudge an organization making changes they think will earn more money. I just think it's not as much of a sure bet as the NCAA seems to think it is.

Going from 67 games to 75 games means more commercials for TV broadcasters, which means more TV money for the NCAA, which means more money distributed to schools and conferences. But, for starters, the current TV deal has six years left and the broadcasters don't have to pay more for the rights just because the NCAA added more games. The NCAA also has to cover transportation, lodging, etc., for more teams. To cover those costs, the NCAA is doing more in-game ads, including those for alcohol, among other ad-related tweaks. (You can read the NCAA's long justification for tournament expansion here.)

I won't get into the lackluster quality of the power conference teams that will now make the tournament, but Dan Wolken of Yahoo Sports put it well: "Thank goodness college sports has such self-serving leadership. Without it, we'd be forced to endure another horror like 17-16 Auburn missing March Madness this year. We can all rest easy knowing that will never happen again." Even if general sports fans aren't interested in the new play-in games, the schools that stand to gain have giant student bodies and huge fan bases. Look at the First Four Out from the most recent tournament: Oklahoma, Auburn, San Diego State, and Indiana. All of them have at least 30,000 students and much larger fan bases.

Thankfully, the companies running your office bracket pool are probably not planning to include the play-in games. But it's still going to be harder for casual fans to fill out their bracket if we're getting even less of the picture figured out on Selection Sunday. The more confusing it is for Janet from accounting to pick her all-purple bracket, the less likely she is to make one at all, or even watch the tournament.

In short, the NCAA is adding inventory while diluting the product, messing with the sacred bracket pools that make the tournament so widely appealing, and making games more unwatchable with more in-game ads. Some people will probably watch the new play-in games, and they will probably make the NCAA a little more money, but most people probably won't be happy about it.

Nobody Wants This (Football Edition)

As long as March Madness is expanding in spite of fan interest, why not expand the College Football Playoff in spite of fan interest, too?

That's what the American Football Coaches Association wants to do, specifically calling for "the maximum number of participants" in the playoff. Apparently that means 24 teams, double the playoff's current size. The plan involves killing conference championship games, keeping the Army-Navy game's exclusive time window but holding playoff games the same day (could get awkward if Army or Navy are in playoff contention!), and finishing all 23 playoff games by the second week of January.

The money might work out if those additional 12 games are worth more than the lost revenue from conference championship games, but the power players seem to think an earlier playoff schedule is necessary to make the expanded playoff work. (One wonders if someone at the NCAA is thinking March Madness should follow this model and expand, with the new rounds of 256 teams and 128 teams happening during the current conference tournament week.)

But consider the incredible damage this plan would have for the best weekend on the college football calendar, Rivalry Week. What if the Kick Six was merely a historical sidenote in a game that only decided which team was getting a playoff bye instead of a game with massive stakes? What if The Game was a top-five matchup that didn't actually have a conference championship bid or playoff spot on the line? What if Texas and A&M both decided to rest their starters because their first-round playoff matchups were only a week away?

Not to mention the cupcake pretenders that will get to claim their season was a success because they made it into the playoff. "Lose to every ranked opponent on your schedule? That'd be no biggie in a 24-team playoff era," as Blake Toppmeyer writes in USA Today. "Just scarf down a few cupcake wins, add in some victories against a handful of mediocre Power conference teams, and it's off to the playoff."

Perhaps more than any other sport, college football is more about crushing your enemies and less about your team's overall success. Devaluing the regular season's rivalry games in favor of a first-round playoff game between two teams with no history could end up backfiring. Inventory is king—more games means more TV money—but it's an interesting tactic for the NCAA to take with its biggest sports when so many people are calling for other competitions (the NBA, MLB, etc.) to play less.

Did the NCAA Forget About Congress?

All of this is happening at a precarious time for the NCAA, when fan sentiment matters a lot more for the organization's future than it normally does. If your entire operating model was possibly going to get upended by Congress, you'd probably want to make sure public sentiment is on your side. Yet the NCAA is making unpopular decisions right before the House of Representatives is planning to vote on its future.

The SCORE Act is supposed to come up for a vote next week, legislation that would regulate the NCAA because it can't figure out how to regulate itself. The bill is supported by the NCAA because it gives them an exemption to antitrust law that would allow them to regulate name, image, and likeness (NIL) payments to athletes, while banning states from setting their own regulations. It would also declare that student athletes are not employees of their school, conference, or the NCAA. New changes to the bill since the last time the House tried to push it through make it more restrictive of transfers, prohibit professional athletes from playing in Division I, and establish a new five-year eligibility rule. It would also somehow prevent people from trying to recruit a coach away during the season. (All of this would be legally challenged in court if it ever passed.)

Republicans are generally sympathetic to the NCAA's desires and want to pass legislation supported by the organization and member schools. Democrats are generally more supportive of athletes, and would prefer to recognize them as employees who are entitled to various legal rights.

The vote on the bill is hanging by a razor's edge. At least one serious attempt to push the SCORE Act through the House already failed in December. The NCAA's recent unpopular decisions may make representatives wary of voting for an NCAA-friendly law.

Anyway, Here's Golf

The best story in golf right now is not a resurgent Rory McIlroy gunning for his seventh major, or the placid Scottie Scheffler making his dominance seem effortless. It's Alex Fitzpatrick—brother of Matt, who won the 2022 U.S. Open and is now ranked fourth in the world.

Alex, about four years younger than Matt, has always been in his shadow. Alex has been grinding away on the DP World Tour (a.k.a. the European Tour) for several years with inconsistent results. He won the Hero Indian Open in March, but his goal has always been an elusive PGA Tour card. Since 2023, Alex and Matt have played together in the Zurich Classic of New Orleans, a rare team event on the PGA Tour. For PGA Tour playing privileges, a win there counts just as much as a win at any other run-of-the-mill PGA Tour event, even though Alex got to play in the event because of a sponsor exemption and you could argue Matt was carrying the team (Alex was ranked 136th in the world before this year's event).

Two weeks ago, the Fitzpatricks won (an amazing recovery shot by Matt sealed it). The win means Alex got his tour card. A lucky fluke, and surely he'd now struggle on his own? Not at all: Alex followed it up in two signature tournaments, featuring better fields, and finished tied for ninth in one and tied for fourth in the other.

Now Alex gets to play for a major title this weekend in the PGA Championship. Matt will be happy to have his brother around—but if he doesn't play well he might look up at the leaderboard and see his brother is in a much higher spot than he is.

(Although I, for one, will be rooting for club pro Michael Block to shine again.)

Replay of the Week

Rest in peace, Bobby Cox. (Also RIP manager-for-a-day Ted Turner.)

That's all for this week. Enjoy watching the real game of the weekend, Heart of Midlothian against Celtic in a match that will likely decide the Scottish Premier League (Saturday at 7:30 a.m. on Paramount+, apparently).

Jason Russell is managing editor at Reason and author of the Free Agent sports newsletter.