The college basketball purists, the Kenpom-ified fans, will extoll the fact that we have the strongest Final 4 ever. All 1 seeds, all dominant teams by Kenpom - historically so to be honest. And yes, that can be great, but if we look back at the last time we had all 1-seeds in the Final 4 (2008), while we got a truly great Championship Game (Kansas over Memphis - the Chalmers shot), we got two forgettable Semifinals - other than some schadenfreude seeing UNC down 40-12. So that really wasn't worth the payoff.
Honestly, even if we get two really great semifinals and a great title game, I still don't really think that redeems this tournament. March Madness has never, ever been about the Final 4. It's always about the path to get there. That's why we rattle off how many Final 4s a coach has made - the one sport where, thankfully so, being a Semifinalist is seen as the goal. But because of that, the real tournament is the first two weekends. The joy, the drama, the cinderellas, the, well, madness.
None of that was there this year, as top ranked teams just ran roughshod. Now, it can go too far the other way too. The 2023 tournament, or 2011 one, when we had no Top-2 seeds make the Final 4, weren't ideal either. There's a happy balance - a happy balance nearly every other year has lived up to in one way or the other. And I can't help but wonder if NIL is to blame.
Now, before I go too far down this path, I want to make it clear I am fully pro-paying players. The NCAA's cartel is still there but I am so glad it isn't the total farce it was for decades. But they just ripped open that pandora's box and unleashed holy hell on college sports. Football was always a have and have nots setup, but basketball never was to this degree. The rate players change schools is crazy. Seemingly any good mid-major underclassman will just get scooped up buy some bigger school with a bigger NIL purse. I do think this is part of the reason the 10+ seeds were just so hapless this year.
There was a crazy graphic floating around Twitter of the starting 5 for the Sweet 16 teams that just showed the original school of each player. It was absurd. There were literally a team or two that had no players who started at that school. Purdue was the only school where all five starters started their college career at Purdue. Only two more had 4/5. It was a stark, dark graphic.
It's hard to pin NIL on why say the #4 seeds couldn't be more competitive with the #1s. Maybe this is just a once-every-20-years type abberation, much like 2008. You look at the rosters of the four #1 seeds in 2008 that made the Final-4 - all going 31-3 or better, and it makes sense that those four romped their way through. On paper the worst team is probably the Kansas team that won the title. But that year also gave us Davidson, and at least two competitive Elite 8 games. This year just had none of that.
The other aspect of NIL, and more than that the player portal and the amount of transferring is how little continuity there is. This isn't really a novel thought, but continuity matters in two ways. First is the more obvious - every now and then you get a team that stays together for a few years. The Villanova teams of 2016-18. The Purdue team that returned everyone from losing as a #1 seed, only to make the Final - or even Virginia before it in 2018-19. There are these stories of blue bloods persevering over a few years. And the other gain is having middle majors get some continuiuty that over 2-3-4 years can outstrip the talent gap.
I don't have a solution. And hopefully this is just a one-year blip. It probably is. Even if we look at 2008, it was followed by two great tournaments in 2009 and 2010. The tournament just works. Ideally this is just an exception proves the rule abberation, but of course you ahve to worry if this on the precipice of NIL signals something larger. Hopefully not, and speaking of hopes, all we can do at this stage is hope the "don't worry" folks are finally right, and all the lack of upsets leads to three great games to close it out. Lord knows we deserve it.
