(08-09-2020 05:20 PM)Stugray2 Wrote: Where is the money for such an expanded Tournament?
Most of the schools you'd take, given the winning record requirement would be smaller ones, the 2nd and 3rd place in those 1 bid conferences you complain about. It's just a nonsense proposal.
Only a change that increases revenue more than payouts, and one that improves the payouts to the top schools (the 6 major conferences) has any hope in hell of getting off the ground. This idea does none of that.
Actually, there would be fewer schools from those 1 bid conferences, not more. This year there would have been 57 teams from the P6 (compared to their average of 41 a year now). In addition there would have been 24 teams from the next four top conferences (A10, AAC, MWC and WCC), and only 15 total from the other 22 conferences.
EDIT: This model involves 24 more games in the play-in round. They won't be nearly as valuable as the games in the later rounds, but they are worth something. That additional revenue could be earmarked for the NIT prize pool.
The big difference in the revenue split comes from the reduced participation payout. Currently, 68 schools earn one unit just for being selected, worth $1.65 million, paid out over six years. In my 96 team model, each team earns only $500K for qualifying for Round 1, paid out immediately.
That difference in cost could shift about $64 million to the performance pool, paid out to the winners of the 63 games in rounds 2-7. That means the value of each unit is about $2.7 million, and the P5 conferences have 15 more teams competing for those wins. So they should expect to earn considerably more in this model than the current one unless they underperform on the court.
Potentially, the likelihood of more tournament games involving P6 schools could also increase the value of the next contract. And, depending on how hard the P6 conferences want to push the threat of starting their own competing tournament, it's possible that a higher percentage of the contract could be allocated to the NCAAT and NIT prize pools at the expense of the pool that is distributed to all member schools based on criteria like number of scholarships issued.