Meet the real villain behind the death of Cinderella in the NCAA tournament
Yahoo Sports • • general
Key Points:
- The lack of mid-major upsets in recent NCAA tournaments is often blamed on NIL and the transfer portal, but the article argues that conference realignment over the past 15 years has had a more significant impact on weakening mid-major programs.
- Realignment has caused a domino effect where power conferences expanded, pulling top teams from mid-major leagues and causing a decline in the overall quality of those conferences, despite them still receiving automatic NCAA bids.
- Statistical analysis shows a clear decline in the quality of lower-seeded automatic bid teams over the past decade, with average KenPom rankings worsening for 12 to 15 seeds, indicating weaker mid-major champions.
- The continuous reshuffling of teams among conferences has eroded the strength and continuity of
