NCAA Tournament: Can Cinderella be revived? The financial and competitive challenges are daunting

The NCAA Tournament has provided a shot for the ages and jaw-dropping displays of dominance but precious little enchantment across three weeks and six rounds of play. The traditional purveyor of charm, Cinderella, was effectively a no-show.

None of the teams seeded No. 13 and below were victorious and, for the second consecutive year, no mid-majors reached the Sweet 16. The only double-digit seed to survive the opening weekend, No. 11 Texas, is one of the richest athletic departments in the country.

While many observers have pronounced Cinderella dead, the sample size (two years) feels a tad narrow for a sweeping conclusion. But clearly, she has been admitted to intensive care, and the causes are clear: A combination of the transfer portal, NIL and realignment has reconfigured the competitive landscape, allowing the power conferences to poach talent at will from the mid- and low-major teams that produced so many memorable upsets over the years.

The sport might be flattening at the top, but the gap between the Power Five conferences and everyone else is rapidly morphing into a chasm.

“Texas is not the Cinderella you’re looking for, but it’s the Cinderella you’re going to get under the current structure,” said Greg Shaheen, one of the central architects of the modern NCAA Tournament.

“There’s nothing wrong with higher seeds advancing. It’s just not as charming.”

Shaheen currently serves as the president of OSM Advisors, an Indiana-based consulting firm. In a previous life, he was the NCAA’s senior vice president for championships. He oversaw March Madness.

Shaheen stepped down from his role in the spring of 2012, days after the conclusion of a tournament that featured victories by two No. 15 seeds: Lehigh over Duke and Norfolk State over Missouri.

In the 2025-26 tournaments, No. 15 seeds are 0-8 with an average margin of defeat of 23.5 points.

The No. 14 seeds? Also 0-8.

Same with the No. 13s.

Is there a remedy? Can the sport rebalance in a manner that allows the George Masons and Loyolas and Florida Atlantics to provide the bracket-busting mayhem that defined the event for decades?

The NCAA can’t impact performance in the tournament. The only recourse, Shaheen believes, is to create the circumstances for success by increasing access for the mid-majors — an endeavor that requires structural changes to the regular season schedule.

After all, the at-large selections and seeds for all 68 participants are based on resumes built over the course of four months and framed by three factors: opponents, locations and outcomes.

Who did you play?

Where did you play?

How did you perform?

Under the current system, there are precious few opportunities for mid-majors to strengthen their resumes by playing power conference opponents — a simmering frustration for hundreds of teams that entered the public sphere after High Point’s first-round upset of Wisconsin.

“It looks pretty obvious to me that high-majors need to play mid-majors early in the season,” Panthers coach Flynn Clayman roared. “Nobody would play us, just like they wouldn’t play Miami of Ohio.”

(High Point earned an automatic berth by winning the Big South. Miami was one of just four mid-majors to receive an at-large bid, along with Saint Louis, Saint Mary’s and Santa Clara.)

Teams in the high-major conferences (ACC, Big East, Big 12, Big Ten and SEC) typically schedule home games against bottom feeders, which generate ticket sales and (usually) guarantee success, or they schedule neutral-site matchups against peer programs because quality losses don’t damage their NET ranking.

“Between the NET and the dollars involved,” Shaheen said, “there is no reason for the big schools to play the mid-majors.”

One possible solution: Tweak the NET rankings.

Two decades ago, Shaheen oversaw a change to the RPI that weighted results based on location. Neutral-site games were weighted as 1.0, with road wins counting as 1.4 and road losses as 0.6. (The weights were reversed for the home teams.)

That approach could be broadly applied to the NET, which replaced the RPI in 2018 and groups results into quadrants based on the opponent’s ranking.

“Maybe you drop each team’s lowest two non-conference road games from the NET,” Shaheen said. “You have to create sufficient incentive for the haves to play road games against the have-nots.”

Even if the NET rankings were tweaked to incentivize matchups that would help mid-majors — and there’s good reason to question whether the Power Five would even agree — the financial obstacles remain significant.

With NIL and revenue sharing placing enormous budgetary pressure on the football-playing schools, home games are more important than ever.

“Years ago, (North Carolina coach) Dean Smith used to schedule games in the home region of his players so their families could see them play,” Shaheen said. “That created some unlikely games. But the economics back then were not as dramatic as they are today.”

Nor was the disparity in talent as significant.

Mid-majors often had a level of continuity and maturity that their power conference opponents did not — an advantage in the pressure-packed tournament atmosphere.

That advantage has disappeared because the best mid-major players use the transfer portal to chase the cash offered by the football schools with deep pockets.

In the previous era, Yaxel Lendeborg would not have left UAB for Michigan and become the Big Ten Player of the Year.

Bennett Stirtz would not have left Drake for Iowa and led the Hawkeyes to a second-round upset of No. 1 seed Florida.

“Cinderellas still could happen,” Shaheen said, “but the programs at the top are only going to get better.

“You can’t draw that back in. College sports is coming to terms with what the free market is. You have to accept the blessings and the curse.

“That might mean we have to redefine what Cinderella is.”

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