Blogging at the New Republic on the Big Dance

The Wages of Wins authors were asked by The New Republic to blog about the NCAA basketball tournament. You can read what all the various bloggers said at Posting Up: TNR on March Madness. Or if you just want to read what Stacey and Dave had to see you can read on here.

HOW ABOUT AN EGALITARIAN NCAA TOURNAMENT?:

Each March NCAA fans and analysts debate the decisions of the NCAA selection committee–should Drexel or Stanford have made the tournament; are “lower-class” NCAA basketball conferences–Mid-Majors–being discriminated against; why should my favorite team be selected for the big dance?

How about this–let all the NCAA basketball teams that are eligible for post-season play enter. In 1999 there were 310 NCAA teams and now there are 336 NCAA teams (less for those ineligible due to bad behavior or the lag for those recently entering). If the tournament is expanded by three more games–a total of 512 teams could play for the National Championship–and there would be no selection discrimination.

Seeding would be based on some objective criteria, such as an index of win-loss record, RPI and strength of schedule (SOS). The downside is that some teams would play one less game (theoretically) than 256 NCAA teams, but that would be the reward for better play. Also televised conference championship games would not be as interesting, especially for conferences that will only send the eventual champion, nor will dominant conferences be able to recoup more revenues from televised games.

In fact looking at the data for RPI, I notice that Air Force had the same win-loss record as Drexel; but Air Force has a higher RPI and a higher SOS. Hmm, I wonder why Drexel was so strongly lamented for not making the tournament and not those at Air Force?

–Stacey Brook

THE CASE FOR PAYING COLLEGE ATHLETES:

Although I very much enjoy filling in my bracket and watching the NCAA Tournament, part of me feels a bit guilty. No, I am not concerned about any lost productivity I suffer at work while I read, write, and think about the tournament. My guilt stems from the nature of the NCAA as an institution. The Big Dance is the major revenue generator for the NCAA. This revenue is primarily generated by the athletes we all enjoy watching. But these athletes are not paid by the NCAA or universities collecting the revenue.

Randy Grant, John Leadley, and Zenon Zygmont have a forthcoming book entitled The NCAA and the Economics of Intercollegiate Sports (World Scientific). This book reviews much of the research on the economics of college sports. For example, economists Robert Brown and Todd Jewell have published research that indicates a star player in Division I men’s basketball will generate more than a million dollars in revenue per season. Clearly this greatly exceeds the amount the student-athlete receives in financial aid from the university.

Who gets this money if it doesn’t go to the players? Clearly some of this money goes to the salaries paid to coaches, who often are the highest paid public employees in their respective states. Jason Zengerle noted in an earlier post in this forum that he is annoyed when Mike Krzyzewski argues that he is “a leader who happens to coach basketball.” I share this annoyance. Although Coach K might play some role in the education and development of his players, these players are primarily educated (at least they should be if they were in school to get an education) by the faculty at Duke University. But the revenue these players generate is primarily pocketed by Coach K.

Grant, Leadley, and Zygmont discuss some positive developments that would result if the players started cashing paychecks. On their list is the impact this would have on the level of cheating in college sports and the willingness of marginal professional athletes to declare early for the NBA draft. Of course the big positive development is that the NCAA would start “doing right” by the student-athlete.

Will we see basketball players paid by the NCAA anytime soon? There is very little financial incentive for the powers-that-be in the NCAA to change this policy. And, although one can argue quite strongly that it would be “the right thing to do,” this argument rarely carries the day when an organization’s financial interests argue otherwise.

–David Berri