http://www.mercurynews.com/2017/03/13/ho...are-spent/

The 2017 tournament is expected to generate the following payouts, which total $211 million:

*** Each conference will receive roughly $1.6 million, regardless of the number of participants or games played.

*** Each game played, which the NCAA defines as a unit, is worth $264,859 to the participating team’s conference. (There is no additional payment for winning the championship game.)

If UCLA were to reach the Elite Eight, for example, the Bruins would generate four units for the Pac-12 — or $1,059,436.

But that’s not a one-time windfall. The units earned for each conference are tallied up and distributed over a rolling, six-year basis.

So UCLA’s hypothetical $1.059 million earned this month would be sent to the Pac-12 every year for six years — along with the dollar-value of the units earned by all the conference’s other participants.

In other words, it pays to have a high number of teams in the tournament and to have a few of them make deep runs.
-- jon wilner

SERIOUS CASE OF THE RUNS