The 68-team extravaganza that some consider the best three weeks in American sports is missing its leading lady.
Arizona 7-2 center Motiejus Krivas rips the ball away from Utah State’s Karson Templin during their NCAA Tournament game at Viejas Arena on Sunday. Top-seeded Florida was on an 18-0 run against Prairie View A&M in the first round of the NCAA Tournament last Friday, and Panthers coach Byron Smith was asked by a sideline reporter during a timeout how his team could slow the chomping Gators.
His pleas for divine intervention went unanswered. Florida won 114-55, the second most lopsided score in NCAA Tournament history and largest since the 1960s.The 68-team extravaganza that some consider the best three weeks in American sports is missing its leading lady. Cinderella is conspicuously absent from the Big Dance for a second straight year. Since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 32 teams in 1975, at least one member of a mid-major conference had reached the Sweet 16 for 49 straight years.“I think America is dying for a mid-major,” Utah State coach Jerrod Calhoun said last weekend, a day before playing No. 1 seed Arizona at Viejas Arena in the second round. “If one of these three or four teams that are left can get to a Sweet 16, you instantly become America’s team, right?Utah State basketball coach Jerrod Calhoun during a practice for the NCAA Tournament at Viejas Arena last week. The Aggies put up a good fight but ultimately succumbed 78-66 at Viejas Arena in the final chance for the little guy. Of the 16 remaining teams that resume play Thursday and Friday, six are from the Big Ten, four from the SEC, three from the Big 12, two from the Big East and Duke from the ACC.The closest we have is No. 11 seed Texas, which snuck into the dance at 18-14 after finishing 10th in the SEC and, ahem, has Division I’s largest athletic budget at north of $300 million. Or maybe No. 9 Iowa, which finished ninth in the Big Ten and has a bunch of guys coach Ben McCollum brought with him from Drake. Or maybe No. 4 Nebraska, another Big Ten school that hadn’t won an NCAA Tournament game before last week. It’s the third straight year only one double-digit seed has reached the Sweet 16 and the second straight year no Nos. 13 through 16 seeds won a game. Thirteen of this year’s 32 first-round games were decided by 20 or more points, the most ever. The average margin of victory was 17.4 points, the highest since the 1985 tournament expansion to 64 teams. Power conferences are 28-4 against everyone else. The last member of a mid-major conference to reach the Final Four? San Diego State and Florida Atlantic in 2023.“Yeah, I mean, that’s a really great question and a deep question,” Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd said Sunday. “We could probably go a lot of different directions with it. “I think that parity is great for the game. But things change. And I think once finances become part of it, there’s going to be a breaking point for some of the lesser programs that just don’t have the finances.And it is. The little guy is getting priced out of a housing market with no rent control. “I mean, we’re going to find out after tomorrow probably what the price tag it is to go to a Sweet 16,” Calhoun said last Saturday. “Most of the power you talk to, they say $10 million. And it’s not going down.” SDSU, according to an open records search, paid its men’s basketball players $2.7 million in revenue-sharing for the 2025-26 season, which was near the top of the Mountain West, statistically the best mid-major conference. Calhoun says Utah State, the regular season and conference tournament champion, was at $2.4 million. Even Grand Canyon, which was considered the richest in the Mountain West, is probably at half what most power conference programs distribute between revenue-sharing directly from the school and outside NIL payments. Add to that the eradication of NCAA rules requiring Division I basketball players to sit out a season when transferring, and you have a lawless landscape of transaction and transiency. “There’s lots of reasons I took the Arizona job,” said Lloyd, an assistant at Gonzaga for 20 years before the Wildcats hired him in 2021. “And one of them was kind of forecasting these changes happening, because right when I was getting the job, the NIL deal was rumored. Then it started in July. “I figured Arizona’s a place that has a pretty strong, long basketball tradition, and they’re going to be excited to invest in basketball. And we have.” Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd during a first-round win against Long Island University in the NCAA Tournament at Viejas Arena last Friday. The inevitable consequence is a massive talent migration following the money to power conferences. And not only the best players but the oldest ones, robbing mid-majors of their great advantage — veteran rosters perfecting intricate offenses for years — back when power conferences trafficked in one-and-done stars amid more restrictive transfer regulations.The metrics reflect the power shift. When SDSU reached the 2023 national championship game, it ranked No. 14 nationally in Kenpom with a differential of +20.34 points compared to the average Division I team. This season, that would have been 31st. Or look at it from the opposite perspective. The Aztecs are No. 49 in Kenpom this season at +16.77 points. Just three years ago, that would have been No. 32, which received a No. 7 seed in the NCAA Tournament. Other metrics tell a similar story, that the disparity between power conferences and top mid-majors has become the widest in history. During the regular season, power conferences went 356-22 against everyone else. “Some of these teams are running an entire new team,” SDSU coach Brian Dutcher said of his mid-major brethren facing annual roster overhaul as their best players are plucked away. “The problem for the Mountain West is all these teams that have won 20 games, it took them a month or so to get these teams together and playing well. So they lost early-season games, and that’s where the conference couldn’t build the resume it needed.” Only four mid-majors received at-large invitations to the 2026 tournament, equaling the record low. The Mountain West went from three, five and three at-large teams in the previous three tournaments to none. “I think it’s fair to say,” Sun Belt commissioner Keith Gill, the chair of the Selection Committee, told media after revealing the field, “that the gap between the country’s elite and the teams on the bubble has appeared to grow, particularly in the past couple of years.” The mid-majors have responded by frantically pumping money into their revenue-sharing and NIL budgets. The power conferences, with exponentially larger TV contracts, shrug and merely increase theirs even more. Evan Miyakawa, an analytics expert who tracks transfer portal spending, estimates that player valuations have already increased 35% from a year ago. “If a player was worth $1 million in the 2025 offseason,” Miyakawa posted on social media, “he’d be evaluated around $1.35 million today.”“I don’t have a great answer for you on how to fix it,” Lloyd said. “So let’s just leave it at that.”San Diego rolls out new blue recycling bins, threatens private-collection holdouts with finesConcerning trends for seniors prompt shift in San Diego CountyBob Dylan announces 2026 summer tour, including San Diego. Here are all the dates.Handpicked by Locals: 5 places to eat, drink and explore in Poway
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