NIL free-for-all poses real threat to what makes March Madness special

Last year’s NCAA Tournament was riveting. It was thrilling. It featured a dramatic Final Four and a national championship game that wasn’t determined until the final horn.

One thing was missing from the most recent edition of March Madness, however: Cinderella.

Only one double-digit seed reached the second weekend, and nobody would ever consider John Calipari and Arkansas a version of David. The entire Sweet 16 featured power-conference schools for the first time since 1975. It was a tournament of Goliaths.

The worry is that as money for players increases in the transfer portal and name, image and likeness era, it will contribute to a growing divide between the haves and the have-nots, the big schools with money and everyone else.

“It’s definitely a little bit of a warning sign, like whoa, we might have lost what made it special,” Stanford coach Kyle Smith told The Post.

Smith was quick to note that this was just one year. It could turn out to be an anomaly. But there are reasons to believe it may become an extended trend.

The days of mid-major teams developing together over a number of years, like Cinderella Final Four teams Loyola of Chicago in 2018 and Florida Atlantic in 2023, are mostly a thing of the past.

The most outstanding player of last year’s Final Four was Florida’s Walter Clayton Jr., a former standout at Iona University. The Elite Eight also included stars who transferred from Morehead State (Johni Broome, Auburn), Florida Atlantic (Alijah Martin, Florida), Ohio (Mark Sears, Alabama), New Mexico (JT Toppin, Texas Tech), Nevada (Darrion Williams, Texas Tech), North Dakota State (Grant Nelson, Alabama) and North Florida (Chaz Lanier, Tennessee).

Top players now leave. It would be financially irresponsible not to.

“Where I think the current model falls short is that we have created a system where it is significantly more financially lucrative to go be the 11th or 12th man at a power-five school than to go be a mid-major star,” said Campbell coach John Andrzejek, who was an assistant on last year’s champion, Florida.

An industry source familiar with the inner workings of player salaries said that the starting point for payrolls of top 20 caliber high-major program is $10 million. That’s double what it was the previous season. Kentucky, which is ranked ninth in the Associated Press preseason poll, has a payroll of reportedly over $20 million.

Smaller schools can’t contend with that.

“It’s insane, they’re almost competing with NBA teams,” Hofstra coach Speedy Claxton said. “What are we doing here? I’m all for these kids getting some money, helping themselves out and their family out, but the numbers they’re making are outrageous. I couldn’t imagine being a millionaire on a college campus. I would lose my damn mind.”

How out of whack is this system? A mid-major assistant coach said that in recruiting high school players, the kids or parents will often tell him the goal is to perform well enough at the coach’s school to advance to a higher level. Claxton will notify higher-level coaching friends about players in his league — some in his program — who could make an impact for them when they eventually transfer.

“I want to help the kids and I want to help my friends,” Claxton said.

There is no regulation. A low-major Division I assistant coach had a star freshman he was able to keep, but it was difficult. The player, his family and AAU coach were frequently contacted by people representing big schools with promises of large paydays. It started after his first big game and continued deep into the spring. The player was loyal, a rarity in the sport.

“You’re getting an education, but it’s student-professional athletes, that’s what it is now,” the assistant coach said. “It’s overseas basketball with classrooms in it.”

The industry source suggested one potential fix: transfer fees. If a bigger school poaches a player from a smaller school, it would cost a fixed amount, similar to professional soccer. A high-major assistant coach, speaking on condition of anonymity, doubted the power conferences would ever go for that. He suggested tweaking transfer rules, allowing one free transfer, with an exception being if a coach is fired or leaves.

“That’s the biggest thing that has to change,” the coach said. “Then the mid-major school can take a player from the bigger school and you can have him for a few years. Same thing with a mid-major star who says, ‘Hey, I’m going to wait until after my sophomore year and then I’m going to go up.’ You have to make a choice at the right time if you only get one free transfer.”

Depending on who you ask, there is a belief that the new revenue sharing model could shift this dynamic. Schools now have the option to pay their own athletes up to $20.5 million. The ones that don’t have FBS football could theoretically have an advantage, although 21 of the teams ranked in the AP preseason Top 25 come from the four conferences — the ACC, Big Ten, Big 12 and SEC — that still have big-time college football. The other four teams — Connecticut, St. John’s and Creighton of the Big East, and Gonzaga — all have significant financial might.

“This year is really something to monitor and watch closely for how wide that gap is between [the big schools and everyone else],” St. John’s athletic director Ed Kull said.

The frequency of top players transferring up has opened high school recruiting at the mid-major level, according to 247 Sports national recruiting analyst Travis Branham. Seventeen players in the 2026 top 150 are committed to schools other than the Big East and the four major football conferences, and there are still several prospects who have to commit. A year ago, it was 13.

Branham believes that the strong mid-major leagues, specifically the Atlantic 10, will soon be able to boast larger payrolls than schools from the aforementioned four big leagues because of revenue sharing.

“People are going to be shocked when they see the success coming out of the Atlantic 10,” he said. “But it’s not going to be shocking to people who understand the economics of what’s happening there.”

That, of course, remains to be seen. This coming March could tell us more.

But Claxton, the Hofstra coach, believes that major change has to occur, or the part of March that everyone loves — Cinderella — is in danger of either becoming much more rare or potentially extinct.

“The upsets occurred when us mid-majors had four-year players, people who we grew in the program, and we developed them, and you would face a younger high-major team,” he said. “That’s when the upsets happened. You’re not going to see that anymore because if we have a good freshman or sophomore, they’re not going to stay with us.”