Posted by oldave on 3/21/2016 8:58:00 AM (view original):
"The comittee makes the ncaa a bunch of money by providing good matchups on television."
explain this the0.
this years contract is already set, right? so some future years negotiations are affected by who plays who in the second round this year?
and again, even if that is true, the specific individuals who are on the committee... these are not ncaa employees, and they seem to be a pretty upstanding group of people... if they are not getting paid under the table to provide these matchups... why would they do it? why would they risk thier reputation to possibly make the ncaa a few more dollars?
regarding indiana and kentucky... i would think there would be plenty of interest regardless of who each of those played in the second round and if someone was going to conspire to do something, i would think it would be to try to seed things so that powers like that were more likely to go deep in the tourney.
i still contend if you throw 68 teams in a hat, you are going to come up with some great matchups. and then you have games mich st and wvu that i think most folks would have told you were yawners when the bracket came out, but didnt turn out that way.
Better 2nd round amtchups lead to an increase in viewers and the more they can make for future negotiations.
The NCAA also sells corporate sponsors making multi millions, the bigger the audience then they can charge more and more later on.
http://www.cbsnews.com/news/march-madness-follow-the-money/
up to 30-35 million dollars for "champion" level corporate sponsors.
Let's totally not assume the NCAA is invovled in some shading dealings, they have a historically clean record and all other sports have great records to just like the NFL and FIFA.
I don't think anyone who knew basketball though WVU and SFA was going to be a yawner it had decent hype for a 3-14 game considering they play pretty much the exact style.