March Madness Isn’t Dead
Good morning and welcome to another edition of Free Agent! No April Fools’ jokes today, the Yankees’ new bats are enough of a joke on their own. But if you can hit 84 mph on the odometer today, do it.
I’ve got more March Madness for you today, including some NIT thoughts. I also want to talk about NFL kickoffs and, separately, tattoos?
But first, another update on the Reason Friends and Family Bracket Contest. There were 12 games in the men’s basketball tournament since our last newsletter. Some guy named Jimmy Kline predicted all 12 correctly, launching himself to the top of the leaderboard. There were also 12 games on the women’s side, which were all correctly predicted by me, your humble newsletter writer—but Jimmy Kline got 11 of those 12 right and is tied for the lead with two others. Each contest is coming down to the wire. Good luck!
Locker Room Links
- Do whatever you want with this information: Men apparently watch women’s sports more than women do.
- The Athletic FC Podcast has a great audio documentary about all the politics swirling around the 2026 World Cup and matches between the U.S. and Mexico, Canada, and Panama.
- Here’s your chance to get into cricket this summer.
- Hello, friends: Jim Nantz promises he’ll keep calling the Masters for the next 12 tournaments.
- Elsewhere in Reason: “To Remain Canadian, Our Northern Neighbors Should Become a Little More American“
- Me whenever my team loses:
If this isn’t the realest NASCAR fan motto, idk what is https://t.co/MxIvbDmwCj
— Jeff Gluck (@jeff_gluck) March 30, 2025
RIP March Madness?
I am reliably informed that March Madness is dead. The time of death was apparently Sunday, March 23, when people were grumpy about all the high-seeded chalk making it to the Sweet 16. The coroners have some thoughts about the cause of death.
Was it name, image, and likeness (NIL) payments to players? Conn Carroll argues as much at the Washington Examiner, my former employer: “As soon as a mid-major finds and develops a good player, that player then immediately leaves for a bigger school.” Or is a unanimous Supreme Court decision to blame? National Review contributor Christian Schneider says so, writing, “In the 2021 case NCAA v. Alston, the court unanimously determined that college sports did not enjoy antitrust exemptions allowing them to deny benefits to student-athletes in the name of ‘amateurism.'” Soon after came NIL payments, an expanded transfer portal, and, next year, direct payments from schools to players.
Sky-high TV ratings beg to differ with the death certificate.
Roughly 9.4 million viewers per game in the first two rounds would argue March Madness is alive and well. That’s the highest viewership for the men’s tournament in three decades. (Viewership was down from those numbers on the first night of the Sweet 16, but still 3 percent higher than last year. We’re still waiting on more TV data from the rest of the weekend’s games.)
The women’s side is usually chalky, and this year is no different with three No. 1 seeds in the Final Four. But TV ratings are still higher than usual—not as high as last year’s Caitlin Clark–fueled popularity, but up 43 percent from 2023 (at least in the early rounds). Star power is a big help on the women’s side, and there were arguably more stars in the women’s bracket (JuJu Watkins, Hailey Van Lith, Paige Bueckers) than the men’s (Cooper Flagg).
One year of chalk need not
Article from Reason.com
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