Rocco Miller + March Madness EXPANSION: A Cash Grab or More Access?
5/1/202651 min
The NCAA is on the precipice of expanding the tournament to 76 teams. Is this a win for "access," or a defeatist move that waters down the greatest event in sports?.
Richmond and Darren are joined by bracketologist Rocco Miller (Bracketeer.org/Field of 68) to peel back the curtain on the business and basketball implications of the 76-team proposal.
In This Episode:
- The 76-Team Math: Why automatic qualifiers and mid-majors might be the biggest losers in the new format.
- The Commissioner’s Statement: Breaking down Dr. Michael Cross’s controversial support for expansion.
- Financial Units: How the "slices of the pie" change when you add more games.
- The Transfer Portal Chaos: Why the current April 7th opening is "gutting" rosters and why we need a week of breathing room.
Presented by Ingles Markets
Clips
Transcript preview
First 90 secondsRichmond Weaver· Host0:00
This is an iHeart podcast. [upbeat music] Guaranteed human. [upbeat music] All right. It is our pleasure to welcome in Mr. Rocco Miller once again to SoCon Fast Break. Rocco, we've talked about it before, that right now a lot of discussion goes on about the NFL being talked about 365, but what about college basketball? [laughs] I think we're starting to get to that point. With everything going on in the world of college basketball, we've got a lot to discuss. Can't thank you enough for joining us here. Again, talking some mid-major basketball, specifically for the Southern Conference.
Rocco Miller· Guest0:39
Yeah, my pleasure, fellas. Good to be back on with both you, Richmond, Darren. Great to see your faces as well. Yeah, I think the, uh, portal opening on April 7th says it all. It's literally the- Yes ... the within hours of Michigan cutting down the nets for better or worse. I mean, you look at the last two seasons before this, we had, you know, Florida cutting down the nets last year, and they were... You know, the portal was already open during the majority of their run. We saw it open even earlier the year before. So it's, it's evolving, and maybe it gets pushed back an extra week next year. We s- we've heard a lot from Dusty May and Kyle Church and guys from the Michigan staff on what a pain it's been to not truly be able to celebrate. I, I, I don't know how much I agree with that because so much of this transfer portal work starts in January now. You, you start to get a feel as a staff whe- whether y- you're the SoCon level, the Big Ten level, or the bottom of D1