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Alexander: Will the NIL revolution ultimately change March Madness?

March 25, 2026

Are we moving closer to a day when March Madness becomes strictly a power conference invitational tournament?

That would be not only a shame, but an atrocity. The true soul of the NCAA basketball tournament lies in its unpredictability, in the little-known program giving itself a true shot at glory by knocking off a brand name. We’ve already seen it in the first weekend: High Point knocking off Wisconsin, Siena giving Duke all it could handle, the California Baptist men roaring back from a big deficit to frighten blueblood Kansas.

And let’s not forget the CBU women, who played No. 2 UCLA to a near standstill for a half, delighting the supporters who had journeyed from Riverside to Westwood, before the Bruins took control in the second half to win by 53 points Saturday night.

Those are the stories that entrance and often delight a nation, even as brackets are busted from coast to coast. But there is also this sobering note, a reminder that the new era of paying players – through name/image/likeness (NIL) deals and direct revenue sharing payments from the schools, the latter mandated by a court order last June – combined with increased player movement through the transfer portal threaten to irrevocably transform this American passion.

And not necessarily for the better.

It’s not just checkbook basketball, though money is involved indirectly as well as directly. The two largest power conferences have bulked up to grotesque proportions, sprawling footprints and ravenous ambitions, thanks to the influence of TV partners Fox and ESPN.

The results were particularly evident when this year’s men’s tournament pairings were revealed. Nine of the Big Ten’s 18 teams qualified, six of them advancing to the Sweet Sixteen, and nine of 16 SEC teams reached the field and four advanced to the second weekend. On the women’s side, the Big Ten had 11 tournament qualifiers and three (including UCLA) reached the Sweet Sixteen, while nine SEC teams made the tournament and six reached the second weekend.

In the men’s field, only four double-digit seeds won in the first round, and two of those were No. 11s Texas (knocking off No. 6 BYU and No. 3 Gonzaga) and Texas A&M, which beat No. 6 St. Mary’s before losing to 2 seed Houston. On the women’s side, the only lower seeds to lose in the first round were Iowa State (a No. 8, losing to No. 9 Syracuse), No. 7 Georgia (lost to No. 10 Virginia) and No. 8 Clemson (which lost to No. 9 USC in overtime).

Consider, too, that while there’s not much transparency when it comes to player payrolls, at least on the men’s side most estimates seem to have the same old characters at the top: Kentucky, Duke, BYU, Arkansas, Louisville, Texas Tech, St. John’s, Michigan, Kansas, Tennessee and Arizona – traditional powers, programs with active and well-heeled boosters, and the worst-seeded of them (Kentucky) a No. 7. All but BYU, Kentucky, Louisville and Texas Tech reached the second weekend.

The gap between the haves and have-nots isn’t going to narrow any time soon, especially since the priorities of the athletes themselves have changed. (And, of course, since the big schools can now poach the best mid-major players when, perhaps enticed by an agent, they enter the portal.)

“I think 10 years ago, or even five to seven years ago, when you met with recruits, the number one question for the coaches was, how do you help me become a pro?” CBU’s Rick Croy said last week before the Lancers’ tournament appearance in San Diego. “And you had to answer that question as a coach and you had to do it effectively. And you had to be able to do it at the mid-major level, and I’m sure you had to do it at the high-major level.

“Where that paradigm shifted is that now oftentimes it’s not ‘how do I become a pro?’ It’s, ‘how do I make the most money that I can possibly make during this four- to five-year window of college?’”

A rarity, it seems, is Croy’s own star, Dominique Daniels Jr., the two-time WAC Player of the Year who stayed in the Inland Empire and whose mission, Croy said, is to play at the highest level.

“I think for us, the more we can find guys that are interested in that at the mid-major level – because they’re out there; you just gotta be exhaustive in hunting them – that’s a great example for guys,” Croy said. “We’ve had a lot of NBA teams call about Dominique Daniels Jr. because he’s that special as a competitor.”

UCLA’s Mick Cronin, speaking before the Bruins began their tournament participation in Philadelphla, noted that transfer Donovan Dent, who signed a $2 million contract, struggled with Cronin’s style of coaching but also probably dealt with what any free agent might.

“Whether it was when (Giancarlo) Stanton went to the Yankees, or when Freddie Freeman came to the Dodgers or Shohei a couple of years ago … it’s a lot of pressure when you’re that guy,” Cronin said. “I tried to help him through that.

“I kept telling him, my analogy is you have to keep throwing punches. You’re still in the ring, man. Just keep throwing punches. You’ll get better. It will get easier.”

It did for Dent, who was the Bruins’ engine down the stretch. But will it get easier for college sports as an institution?

“You either change with the times or they change you out for somebody else,” Cronin said. “At UCLA, I was the only one to embrace NIL at the begininng. (The) only one. It’s been a yearly fight to continue to raise money. We’ve gotten a little better every year. … I’m of the opinion that you can’t try to fix and patchwork the old system. We got to just blow the whole thing up and figure out what works today.”

A new system seems necessary not only for football and men’s and women’s basketball but for the Olympic sports, who are allotted a small portion of the $20.5 million in revenue sharing payments that each school can disburse but, as the title implies, carry the lion’s share of responsibility for training those who will compete in the Olympic Games.

And if you’re part of a mid-major basketball program, one that already finds itself merely struggling to stay in the same ecosystem as the sport’s big names – much less keep your own best players – do you wonder what comes next?

Finally, will it eventually reach the point where the big conferences decide to go their own way and leave the rest of college basketball to have its own smaller championship? A lower case march madness, perhaps?

Yes, that would be an atrocity.

jalexander@scng.com

Orange County Register

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Alexander: Will the NIL revolution ultimately change March Madness?

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