It’s March, the best sports month of the year. Everyone’s watching college basketball with their friends, making hopeful brackets and eating buttery popcorn. The competition heats up as it advances from the Sweet Sixteen to the Elite Eight to the Final Four. Suddenly, out of nowhere, a small school rises up among the mix. An underdog. A scrappy, dedicated team with a lot of heart goes from being an afterthought to a contender. They may even win it all.
This is what March Madness used to be. It used to be magical — a tournament where hard work and determination could get just as far as a Power 5 logo on your jersey. It used to be the home of the Cinderella story.
Now, March Madness just feels like a bad Disney remake — soulless and predictable.
As this year’s March Madness comes to a close, everyone’s gearing up for a Final Four battle royale between Duke and Houston and Florida and Auburn. I had Florida vs Auburn on my bracket for the Final Four because why wouldn’t they be? They are the two strongest teams in the SEC, and nearly everyone predicted them to make it to the end.
The Southeastern Conference broke records with this year’s tournament, having 14 teams representing the conference. I always love seeing the Southeast show out during March Madness (go Vols), but this year’s SEC sweep seems like the symptom of an underlying issue.
There’s a clear reason why this year’s tournament feels so different — the transfer portal. No, the transfer portal isn’t some mystical comic book concept, but it’s certainly starting to feel like one. The transfer portal has made it easier than ever for colleges to recruit the best student athletes to join their programs. It’s increased player mobility, allowing student athletes to switch to schools that offer them more money and playing time.
Coaches and athletic directors use the transfer portal in a highly strategic way. College athletics have essentially become a “pay to play” program where the best athlete at a small school can get scooped up by a bigger and better program in their upperclassman years. These large D1 schools are building up super-teams who dominate in the postseason — the biggest budget wins. We might as well start calling these athletic directors Nick Fury.
The dynamic of college sports has shifted, and I’m not certain that it’s for the better.
This new era of college sports is the stroke of midnight that is ending the iconic March Madness Cinderella stories. All of the teams competing in this year’s Final Four are number one seeds. No surprises, no underdogs, no hope for the little guy. With all of the small schools losing their best players to the transfer portal, those fan-favorite, bracket-ruining upsets from years past seem gone forever.
I can’t say that I blame the coaches or student athletes. With tens of thousands of dollars and glory on the line, I would probably do the same thing. The real heart of this issue, though, is the disconnect between the role of student and the role of athlete.
College sports have always been a big deal (especially in the South), but with the introduction of the NIL, collegiate athletics have soared in popularity. These Power 5 college athletes have become celebrities, but they aren’t getting the chance to just be students.
Many of these D1 athletes are missing out on the connections and memories that they would make if they stayed with the same program every year. They are missing out on beautiful pieces of the college experience, the highs and the lows of student life — and that’s sad to me.
These athletes also miss out on building team chemistry and bonds. They no longer get the opportunity to know and love their teammates on such a personal level or to start from the bottom seed and fight their way to the top — the very thing that always made college athletics, especially March Madness, so special.
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