The Dirty Secret of March Madness 💰

I love Fridays as much as the next guy, but this might be one of the top 3 Fridays of the whole year.

My Offical Friday Rankings: 

1. Friday after Thanksgiving

2. Good Friday

3. First Friday of March Madness

🗞 The Big Story:

March Madness is a $1 billion industry, and every year the NCAA sets aside money for a “basketball fund" to be paid out to the 68 teams who participate in the tournament.

This year that fund is likely to be close to $300 million, but not every team gets an equal share of the pie.

Here are the rules for how the money is distributed:

• You get paid per game you play in the tournament (minus the championship)

• Payments are issued in units

• The unit amount goes up by 3% every year

• This year, one unit = $360,000

But here’s the kicker:

You get paid that unit amount every year for the next six years.

This means that a team that goes from the play-in game to the Final Four would get paid the maximum of six units per year for the next six years for a total likely worth over $13 million.

For many smaller schools and conferences, making March Madness once can mean program-changing money.

🚨 Hot Take:

This payout structure is a great reason not to remove the play-in game.

Many notable college basketball commentators blabber about how it’s unfair that a conference champion 16-seed has to play an extra game…

But @JimmerRangePod on TikTok put it best when he pointed out that having four 16-seeds play in the First Four gives them a winnable game.

Translation: A school that really needs it gets a chance to play in a second tournament game and win some extra money.

Otherwise, you’d have every 16-seed only playing one tournament game and capping their winnings (unless you’re UMBC in 2018, then you make your own luck).

🎨 You Can’t Argue With Science:

I hope you made your brackets accordingly. This entire carousel is golden btw.

🛸 We Live in the Future

Did you guys see this Airless Basketball Prototype Wilson 3D printed for the dunk contest?

Thank you so much for reading my (first) newsletter. I promise this will be the worst one.