AILSA CHANG, HOST:
So who killed Cinderella? Don't freak out. I'm talking just about basketball. This year's Sweet 16 is set for both the men's and women's brackets, and there is not a Cinderella in sight. Dan Wolken has been covering this abrupt departure from the norm. He's senior writer for Yahoo Sports and joins us now. Welcome, welcome.
DAN WOLKEN: Hey. Thanks for having me on.
CHANG: Thanks for being with us. OK, so why are there fewer Cinderellas now? Like, you explained there's been kind of this steep decline in mid-level teams in college basketball. Why has that happened?
WOLKEN: A lot of things are going on in college sports right now, and you do have to start with the fact that players now can get paid. And this has been a defining change in college sports for the last three, four years, ever since 2021 when the NCAA changed the rules to allow athletes to profit off their name, image and likeness. And so what's happened is that the schools - the rich schools with the big fan bases - have been able to amass a lot of money to pay players.
CHANG: The best players, yes?
WOLKEN: Yes. And a lot of it's happening in what is called the transfer portal. It used to be in college sports that you could only transfer with a penalty, that you had to sit out one year unless there were extremely special hardship circumstances. But the transfer portal and the rules have changed so that now athletes can transfer without penalty and can do so often multiple times. So what will happen a lot is somebody enrolls at a smaller school, one of these mid-major programs, and they show that they can play, and then all of a sudden, they are getting all these offers from the rich schools to...
CHANG: Wow.
WOLKEN: ...Transfer to come...
CHANG: Yeah.
WOLKEN: ...To their school. So that has definitely sapped some of the mid-majors, the Cinderellas of talent and continuity.
CHANG: OK. So if the situation of fewer Cinderellas in college basketball persists, who gains and who loses over time? Like, tell me - the players, the gamblers, the schools, TV - who are the losers and winners?
WOLKEN: Yeah. Well, the losers are very clearly the conferences at the bottom. You know, the NCAA tournament has always been sort of this equal opportunity situation where, you know, everybody's got a chance. If you win your conference, you get a invitation to the big dance, and you can shoot your shot against the top schools. And over time, there's been a lot of great upsets, and they were able to play their way into the Sweet 16 or even the Elite Eight, and there's been even a couple that have made it all the way to the Final Four.
So if you lose that from March Madness, I think there's an existential question that everybody's got to grapple with which is, have you changed the tournament? Have you made it unrecognizable? Have you taken it from this charming, sort of democratic tournament that everybody can participate in and have life-changing success to a tournament that maybe looks a little bit more like college football, where you just don't have the smaller schools really with the ability to compete. And look, I do think that some of this will self-correct. Some of it is cyclical. But there's no question that the talent drain on the mid-majors...
CHANG: Yeah.
WOLKEN: ...Has been a big problem for them, and it does impact the way that the season and the tournament probably plays out. But I don't think it's over. I don't think it's over for now.
CHANG: OK. Well, then, how does that correct over time? Like, looking ahead over the next several years, how do you see smaller teams or even mid-level teams having more access to the end of the tournament?
WOLKEN: Well, what I would say is that when you saw in past years what these upsets looked like, they weren't more talented than their opponents. They played really well in a single-elimination tournament, and there is always a bit of randomness in the sport of basketball when you're talking about single elimination. That's why the NBA plays best of seven, right? You know, there's no guarantee that just because you've got better players that you're going to play well on that day. But I do think that over time, if this trend we've seen the last couple of years continues, I do think there's going to be an existential question about whether some of these smaller conferences, whether it's worthwhile for them to stick in Division I. And I think that's where I think you have conversations that make people in college sports deeply uncomfortable.
CHANG: Dan Wolken is a senior writer with Yahoo Sports. Thank you so much.
WOLKEN: No problem. Thank you. Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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