The Final Four of NCAA Division I basketball tips off this evening. The tourney’s top four seeds (Auburn, Duke, Florida and Houston) all advanced to San Antonio. They’re all from “power” conferences. Cinderella doesn’t live here anymore.
The very first game of the tournament was a “First Four” matchup between Alabama State and St. Francis University (PA). The game was at the University of Dayton’s arena, and I was there. Fun game! It came down to a last-second shot by Alabama State after a full-court pass.
That game probably marks the last time we’ll see St. Francis in “March Madness.” Because the school’s board of trustees voted to move their athletics from D-I to D-III. The university president, The Very Rev. Malachi Van Tassell, explained the logic behind that move in this Op-Ed in the Washington Post:
Father Malachi is a Franciscan priest. But prior to joining the order, he was a Certified Public Accountant (bio is here). He knows the math doesn’t work anymore for small schools, especially if they want to be known for schooling instead of for the semi-pro folks on the b-ball team.
Intercollegiate athletics is growing in complexity, based on realities such as the transfer portal, pay for play and other shifts that move sports away from a campus-based love of the game to one that resembles a business… Most Division I schools are forced to squeeze more money from student fees and fundraising to pay for their athletic programs and stay competitive, and often reallocate current and future operating dollars away from salaries and classrooms.
Players are transferring out of schools like ours to play for money and fame at schools with bigger name recognition and budgets. The fact that, for the first time, there isn’t a single program from outside the four major conferences in the tournament’s second weekend bears this out.
Father Malachi wants his student-athletes to be students first, and enjoy campus life. That’s not realistic in the power conferences. There, the “student-athletes” are mainly athletes, and grist for the money-making mill. Don’t get me wrong – I’m fine with the players cashing in. But how can they feel much attachment to a school when they’re likely to leave a year later for greener pastures?
the reality is that big-brand programs are farm teams for the National Football League and the National Basketball Association, and small universities have become farm teams for the big-brand programs.
As a proud alum of Xavier University, another small Catholic school, I really understand what the Padre is laying down. Nearly as soon as my Muskies lost in the tourney, our men’s b-ball head coach departed for the deeper pockets — for him and the players he recruits — at the University of Texas. Nearly every player on the team with eligibility left entered the transfer portal — with the best returning player joining his old coach at Texas (“Hook ’em” indeed… with dollars.) Xavier’s new coach, Richard Pitino, inherited a roster consisting of… one redshirt player. There’s no continuity for fans anymore. We’re not rooting for the student-athletes at our alma mater, we’re rooting for laundry, basically.
If you like the David vs. Goliath story, you’re out of luck. Unless changes are made to NIL and transfer rules, we’ll be watching the same big-money schools duke (ha!) it out every year, while Cinderella is forced to scour the country for new players every year.
I do think other schools should follow the lead of St. Francis, and put the emphasis back on the student experience, and invest more in the school, instead of funneling all that cash into being a feeder system for bigger schools and the pros. It just makes (dollars and) sense.
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