The UTSA men’s basketball program is set to possibly make a lot more money this upcoming season, and it has nothing to do with how well they’ll play.
This year, Conference USA is making a radical change to the conference schedule for every team. Rather than have a round-robin of teams all playing each other twice in a home-and-home format, after 14 games, the top five Conference USA teams will play each other again in the hopes that by playing better competition, more than one team will improve ratings that the NCAA selection committee uses to choose the field for the NCAA Tournament.
Why do that? It’s simple: Money.
The more teams that a conference gets into the NCAA Tournament, the more money that conference receives. Also, the more games those teams win in the tournament, the bigger the payout. It doesn’t just help to get multiple teams in, it also helps if those teams are seeded higher so they have a better chance of advancing further.
Conference USA hasn’t had multiple teams qualify for the NCAA Tournament since 2012, and they haven’t had multiple teams win an NCAA Tournament game in the same season since 2005. Although back then, the conference looked vastly different with teams like Cincinnati and Louisville representing them.
And to give them credit, John Calipari’s Memphis squads often made deep runs, feeding that sweet moolah into the pots of Conference USA programs.
But those days are long gone, and the conference is looking to do something different to see more teams in the big dance so they can get some more money out of it.
They’ll still have the conference tournament that offers an automatic bid but now tourney season and big games will start a month earlier for the teams at the top, meaning better games with higher stakes.
And if it’s all as fun as it sounds and the fans love it, then everyone’s a winner here.