Originally posted by CALUPA69
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March Madness money is split into a few different things. Much of it goes into the NCAA General Fund, which is distributed in about 10 different grants to schools. Among these are grants to help pay scholarships to student athletes.
The part people think about as the March Madness Money is the "pool" money.
Who is the pool money distributed? This is based on units. A unit is given to the conference for each game a team from your conference wins during the NCAA tourney. Seems simple right? It's not that simple. Why? Some games don't count as units. Those include the first game played by the conferences automatic qualifier in the tourney. Additionally, the national title game doesn't earn units either. This means if a conference qualifies 1 team each season, and that team is 1 and done, the conference collects zero units for that season.
Units carry over for a 6 year period, playable each 6 years.
For the MAC, they have not done well in the NCAA Tourney. For the years 2014-2017 they earned ZERO units. They get one unit for 2018 and 1 for 2019 (thanks to Buffalo). Each unit was worth $280,300 for the conference. This means the conference would get $560,600 based on the existing units. Remember that money gets split among the conference membership and the conference office. Each school is getting less than $50,000 from that pool.
The other money that comes from being an NCAA D1 member, and FBS member is a much larger impact on the budgets. Much of that money does come from the NCAA Tourney, but in a much more indirect manner.
Now, with all that said, some conferences absolutely do count on the Tourney Pool to help the conference. For the non-football conferences, it can be much more of an impact. For the FCS conferences it can be much more of an impact. Given the way conferences split the money, having a successful run by a team can be a nice windfall for a conference.
I actually did a spreadsheet showing the number of units for each conference as part of my Sports Management Master's program.
The ACC leads the way with 133 units over the last 6 years. The Big Ten is second with 99, while the Big 12, SEC, Pac 12, and Big East all have 58 or more units (at the end of 2019). those 6 conferences have earned their position as the major conferences, and do have the money to go with it. The ACC's units brought in 33.35 million to the conference. That is a nice chuck of change, but still only a portion of the individual schools budgets.
The second tier schools are the American, A-10, West Coast Conference (thanks to Conzaga), Missouri Valley and Mountain West, which all have between 10 and 26 units.
Tier 3 is the "low-mid-majors" these conferences include all except the 5 I will list in tier 4. These 16 conference have between 1 and 4 units. This means between $280,300 and $1.1 million for the conference and its members per year. (Remember it gets split up). For example, the $1.1 million is Conference USA, which splits that money 15 ways (14 schools, plus the conference office). The MAC falls into this category.
Tier 4 is the conferences currently collecting ZERO units. They have had their automatic qualifier lose each time the last 6 tourneys, and have no wins from at-large qualifiers. These conferences are the MAAC, WAC, Horizon, Big Sky, and CAA. They collect ZIP from pool fund, but still benefit from the other money handed out by the NCAA to schools and conferences.
If you notice, the SWAC and MEAC, which are traditionally the lowest ranked conferences both have units. They normally have their lone qualifier play in the play-in game. If they win, the next game they play, as a 16 vs 1, will earn the conference a unit. Being in the play in game can help a conference.
This begs the question, why does a school want to be D1, if the money from the tourney really isn't all that? The answer is the point fund money isn't all that, but the other money is much greater at D1 than D2 or D3. Something like 95% or NCAA revenue goes to the D1 level.
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