As Conor posted earlier last week, March Madness has been in full-session and has definitely had its share of winners, losers, and upsets. But with the Final Four coming up this weekend and the NCAA tournament coming to a close, I thought it would be interesting to find out where all the revenue that is derived from this month-long event actually goes. According to Forbes.com's Patrick Rishe's research, the NCAA (National Collegiate Athletic Association) distributes its money that it gains, from its television contracts with CBS and a variety of other networks, amongst the NCAA Division 1 conferences that participate in the tournament. The conferences are then responsible for dividing the money they receive from the NCAA to the institutions within their respective conferences. The conference is ultimately responsible for who gets what amount of money, where they may choose to split it evenly amongst their institutions or disproportionately to the schools that advanced the farthest in the tourney.
The amount a conference receives is based on how well their teams do in the tournament. As Rishe explains: "[Each school receives a] 'unit' [that] is awarded to a conference for each game a member school participates in, except the championship game. In 2009-10, each “basketball unit” was approximately $222,206 for a total $167.1 million distribution."
With this statistic, it is easy to see how some conferences like the Big East, ACC, and Big 12 earn so much money in the span of a mere five years. Because of March Madness alone, the Big East conference has received $86.7 M in the past 5 years. This is double the amount of a "non-BCS," or non-major, conference like Conference USA that has only garnered $40.8 M in the same time period. Although it is obvious that the Big East has the advantage of being able to send a multitude of teams to the NCAA tournament (setting a record this year with 11) whilst the C-USA teams send a mere two, if they are so fortunate.
According to Rishe:
"BCS Conferences collectively averaged $14.8 M annually in 'basketball units,' which is 3.65 times greater than the $4.05 M averaged by the 8 non-BCS conferences analyzed herein. "
Ultimately, the point I seem to be heading for is that is it fair that just because a school is from a major conference, a la UConn or Kentucky, that they receive a such large sums of money and continue to grow richer? Is it also ok that they continue to benefit from all the positive externalities that come with the extra money, such as recruiting benefits and exposure? Is there a chance for schools from smaller conferences, like Butler of the Horizon League and Virginia Commonwealth of the Colonial Athletic Association, to close the gap between the "BCS" and "non-BCS" conferences? I found this to be exceedingly similar to the subject of social mobility we discussed last week and look forward to your thoughts on the desparity in the NCAA or anything pertaining to the interesting Final Four we have this year. P.S. GO BUTLER!!!
1 comment:
Yeah Joe. While watching the tournament recently, I've come across an NCAA-sponsored commercial that effectively goes over where all of this revenue gets distributed. The commercial essentially states what you stated, that the money gets sent back to the schools, (although the commercial put it much more... vaguely than you did, to make themselves look more charitable than they really are, I suppose.)
Keeping that in mind, I think the distribution of money to the conferences that perform better in the tournament are kind of unfair. It's like... the poverty trap! Oh damn. It's a recurring cycle! Non-power conferences have a high probability of staying that way! But on the other hand, this cycle is just a part of what makes the tournament so interesting: that a "non-power conference team" can upset a "power conference team". Can you say MOREHEAD STATE OVER LOUISVILLE?
Yeah.
VCU > Butler.
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