March Madness as we know it could be on the way out amid seismic changes in college sports
Tracking the changes upending college sports can be as frenetic as flipping between all the games going down over the first week of March Madness. Ultimately, those changes could impact what America’s favorite basketball tournament looks like in the future — or whether it exists at all.
News about “pay for play” in college sports gushes from a veritable firehose these days. Whether it’s the Dartmouth basketball team looking to unionize, a judge undercutting the NCAA’s ability to regulate payments to athletes or yet another bout of conference realignment, the stakes are clear: Everything in college sports is open for discussion, interpretation and adjustment.
That includes the industry's most hallowed tradition, the NCAA basketball tournaments, which begin this week and will stretch from coast to coast. The bottom line behind it all is money.
“There’s no pretense anymore,” said Rick Pitino, the
