Tournament to expand
Don’t fret about the golf
Good morning, all and happy Thursday!
March Madness is about to get bigger. No surprise here. We have written and it has been reported for months, elsewhere, the NCAA men’s and women’s basketball tournaments were on the verge of expanding its field from 64 teams - not counting the First Four games that are played on the Tuesday and Wednesday before the tournament. Now it is about to become official. The tournament will expand to 76 teams.
Why now, you ask? Why tamper with a good thing? The answer is simple: money. It always comes down to money. There is more money to be made. It is no more complicated than that. And if you think it is otherwise, then check the story below.
May says more money is needed
Dusty May, the head coach of the national champion Michigan men’s basketball team tells Front Office Sports it will cost more than $10M for the Wolverines to make another title run next season. Think about that for just a moment. The days of going to school to get an education and augment it with participation in collegiate athletics are long gone. I am not being critical about the system, just making an observation.
Anyway, with the NIL and revenue sharing, Michigan needed $10M to build this past season’s championship. Now it will need more. But May said it is all about return on investment and sinking more than $10M into making another national title run will bring more publicity to the school.
Well, he is right about outlaying that dough to try for another title, but I am thinking the football program has brought plenty of notoriety to Michigan over these past decades.
Don’t fret about the LIV golfers
The media is having a field day over the soon-to-be disbanded LIV Golf Tour. It’s all about the clicks remember. The announcement could come as soon as today that the Saudi-backed tour will pull the plug on its multi-billion-dollar investment into the entity that was created to challenge the staid, traditional PGA Tour. Once that happens, LIV will collapse.
But what will happen to the high profile players who took the money and abandoned the PGA, the media is screaming? Golf Digest is telling us it could be a challenge for these golfers who want back in, especially with 11 of those golfers suing the PGA Tour.
Far be it from me to criticize that august publication, but I do not think so. Yes, there will be some effort by the PGA to extract its pound of flesh, but believe me, the PGA Tour needs those high profile golfers, such as Bryson DeChambeau, Jon Rahm and the like, as much as they need the PGA Tour. The warring factions will come to an accommodation.
Meanwhile, you have to wonder if Brooks Koepka and Patrick Reed knew something was up, when they abandoned LIV and did their penance to return to the PGA. It is obvious they saw the handwriting on the wall. Fortunately, professional golf is about to become whole again - no pun intended - and that’s a good thing for all concerned.
That is going to do it for today’s newsletter. Thank you for being a subscriber and have a terrific day!
DAN