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The SEC was not always considered a basketball conference. That has changed, and emphatically, as it shattered the previous record by having 14 teams reach the men’s tournament.
Is March Madness balanced right now, or is there a bias in favor of power conferences? Reply to this email with your thoughts and you may be featured in a Reader Response section later this week.
—Amanda Christovich and David Rumsey
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The SEC set a new record Sunday, earning more men’s NCAA tournament bids than any other conference in history. The total number, led by conference champion Florida: 14. The previous record, set by the Big East 14 years ago: 11.
The conference will earn $26 million right off the bat.
The breakdown goes something like this: Each conference earns a distribution from the “Equal Conference Fund” for participating in the tournament and sending their conference champion, considered the conference’s “automatic qualifier.” The pool is between $50 million and $60 million.
Then, from the Men’s Basketball Performance Fund, conferences earn a “unit,” about $2 million, for each additional team they send to the Big Dance. Teams continue to earn units for each time they survive and advance, all the way up to the national championship game. The fund is worth between $170 million and $180 million. Because conference champions aren’t part of the units calculation, the SEC will wind up with $26 million.
The SEC wasn’t always steamrolling other conferences in men’s March Madness. A decade ago, the league was sending as few as three teams. But commissioner Greg Sankey invested heavily in the sport, hiring men’s basketball leadership at the conference office and creating performance bonuses.
Fast forward to now, and the league has created a “college football Saturday” culture for men’s basketball. The SEC men’s basketball group-chat boasts six of the top-20 highest-paid coaches (of all the publicly reported contracts) in the sport, schools have built sparkling new facilities, and the league has invested in its conference tournament.
“I say, within this iconic conference, that men’s basketball is still this unique growth opportunity,” SEC associate commissioner for men’s basketball, Garth Glissman, tells Front Office Sports.
The biggest question going into the tournament is whether an SEC team can cut down the nets for the first time since Kentucky’s 2012 championship.
For more on the SEC’s ascent to men’s basketball supremacy, read the FOS Sunday feature.
The Indianapolis Star
March Madness will be greatly impacted by the influence of conference realignment in the women’s NCAA tournament.
Three of the four No. 1 seeds are teams playing their first season in a new conference: Texas in the SEC and USC and UCLA in the Big Ten.
The USC-UCLA Big Ten women’s tournament championship game last Sunday averaged 1.44 million viewers on CBS, the second-most-watched iteration of the title game behind last year’s game featuring Caitlin Clark and Iowa against Nebraska, which drew 3.02 million. Meanwhile, the South Carolina-Texas SEC championship game averaged 1.3 million viewers on ESPN. The Gamecocks, defending national champions, are the fourth No. 1 seed.
Each of those championship games would be set for rematches in the Final Four if each top seed advances out of their quadrant.
South Carolina coach Dawn Staley became the highest-paid coach in the history of women’s college basketball after signing a contract extension in January that pays her $4 million annually.
The Gamecocks, who enter the tournament with a 30-3 record, won’t be able to match their perfect 38–0 mark from last season, but are still the betting favorites to win the national championship at most sportsbooks.
However, No. 2 UConn is right behind South Carolina, and even favored at some books. A meeting between the Gamecocks and Huskies could only come in the national title game.
Iowa has made it back to the NCAA tournament in its first season without Clark, earning a No. 6 seed.
It will be a much tougher road to the national championship game, where the Hawkeyes lost each of the past two tournaments as a No. 1 seed. The Hawkeyes will play No. 11 Murray State in the first round.
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The Indianapolis Star
For the first time in its history, the women’s NCAA basketball tournament will offer prize payouts to successful teams—modeled after a system that men’s teams have enjoyed for decades.
The NCAA will award $15 million to conferences for sending more than one women’s program to the Big Dance, and additional funds for programs that survive and advance. Next year, the pool will increase to $20 million, and in 2027, it will go up to $25 million. After that, the pool will increase by 2.9% per year, the same amount as the men’s system.
The women’s format will mirror the men’s payout distribution. All conferences will receive a payout for being tournament-eligible. Then, conferences earn one “unit” for each team that makes the Big Dance, with the exception of the automatic qualifier (the conference tournament champion). This year, a “unit” is worth about $100,000.
The Big Ten sent 12 teams, the most of any league, and the SEC sent 10—earning both more than $1 million. The ACC is third with eight bids and should make just under a million dollars. The Big 12 wound up with seven bids, and the Ivy League notched three.
Teams then earn units for each game they win, all the way up to the national championship game.
The units system was a recommendation made in the Kaplan, Hecker, and Fink gender equity report in 2021, commissioned by theNCAA after equity issues were exposed between the men’s and women’s tournaments. South Carolina coach Dawn Staley has called it the most important equity improvement the NCAA could make.
The governing body didn’t implement the system right away, however, saying the units system had to derive from a more lucrative women’s media rights deal. The NCAA got its new package in 2024, inking a deal with ESPN for 40 championships that values the women’s tournament at $65 million per year.
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A new era of Formula 1 began Sunday in Melbourne, and it reinforced the biggest shift from last year: Red Bull’s hold on monolithic F1 dominance is slipping.
Lando Norris and McLaren beat Max Verstappen and Red Bull by less than a second to win the Australian Grand Prix, marking the first time three-time defending drivers’ champion Verstappen hasn’t won the season-opening race since 2022.
Lewis Hamilton, who shocked the sport last year with his bombshell decision to move from Mercedes to Ferrari, finished in 10th place while debuting for his team, two spots behind his teammate Charles Leclerc. Hamilton’s annual earnings with Ferrari are reportedly projected to end up around $100 million.
McLaren, which ended Red Bull’s dominant run in the constructors’ championship last season, could have plenty of competition this season, as F1 may have the most parity it’s seen in years. Third- and fourth-place finishes for George Russell and Andrea Kimi Antonelli on Sunday earned Mercedes a total of 27 points, which ties them with McClaren in the team standings. McLaren’s Oscar Piastri finished ninth.
The 2025 F1 season will have a record-tying 24 races across the world, including another three in the U.S.: in Miami, Austin, and Las Vegas.
In the U.S., F1’s media rights deal with ESPN is expiring, and a new broadcast contract for 2026 and beyond could be struck before the season’s end. Netflix is among the media companies exploring F1’s live rights.
Last month, F1 president and CEO Stefano Domenicali said that discussions with ESPN were still happening, even though the exclusive negotiation period between the two parties had passed.
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“I’m finally gonna get my wish here in the not-too-distant future.”
—Los Angeles Golf Club owner Alexis Ohanian, on his desire for TGL to expand into women’s golf.
The indoor team golf league co-founded by Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy begins its first playoffs on Monday night, with Los Angeles as the No. 1 seed.
Ohanian, whose wife Serena Williams is also a team investor, spoke to FOS about TGL’s first season, what he learned from his time at Angel City FC, and what he wants to see next. Read the full Q&A with Ohanian here.
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Is the men’s NCAA tournament balanced right now, or are power conferences too well-represented?
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