Garbage Time Sports

For decades, underdogs defined March Madness. Now, a new era of money and movement is rewriting the script.

March, 2026

For decades, the appeal of the NCAA men’s basketball tournament has been its unpredictability. Every March, underdog teams from relatively unknown programs have stunned powerhouses, busted brackets and produced the Cinderella stories that have defined the essence of March Madness. However, there is a growing shift in college basketball that may represent a major paradigm shift.

Since 2019, I have built annual NCAA tournament matrices using advanced statistics to evaluate how good teams really are entering the tournament. In recent years, those numbers have begun to change. As name, Image and likeness deals and the transfer portal redefine roster movement across the sport, the statistical gap between power-conference teams and mid-major programs has widened dramatically.

The Result, according to the data, could be fewer Cinderella runs and a more predictable tournament.

The data that I have used is a compilation of advanced stats that have correctly predicted the last six national champions. The four stats I use are Schedule-Adjusted Dominance Index (SADI), Offense-Defense Context Index (ODCI), Tempo-Controlled Efficiency Score (TCES) and Balanced Efficiency Ratio (BER). Deeper look into each of the stats HERE.

Let's look at two dominant, number one-seeded teams, who have won the National Championship: the 2025 Florida Gators and the 2019 Virginia Cavaliers. UVA ended their year with a better record and were the number one team overall in the tournament, while the Gators were incredible in their own right, but they came into the tournament as the number three overall team. So you would think that they must be similar statistically; however, you would be incredibly wrong. UVA’s HenMo score came in at 63.12, the best in the country that year. Florida also had the highest score in 2025, but their score was 107.07. Statistically, these two teams were not in the same stratosphere.

Now, why is this? I hypothesize that when you bring in more transfers, you are able to modify your team to be the best it can possibly be statistically, which weakens the weaker teams and strengthens stronger programs. The UVA team only had one transfer on its roster, while Florida had 7 transfers, including star player Walter Clayton, who came from Iona.

Historically, smaller programs have relied on continuity and player development to compete with larger schools. While major programs usually attract elite recruits out of high school, these smaller programs usually focus more on developing under-recruited, raw prospects and have them flourish over four years. By the time they reach the NCAA tournament, they often feature much older players who have played together for years. This experience has frequently translated into upsets.

In 2018, Loyola Chicago reached the Final Four as an 11-seed. In 2013, 15-seed Florida Gulf Coast made it all the way to the Sweet Sixteen with their high-flying offense, later dubbed “Dunk City.” Similar runs by lower-seeded teams have been a part of the tournament's identity since its conception, and it continues to excite fans year after year. However, the structure of college basketball began to change dramatically in recent years.

In 2021, the NCAA allowed athletes to profit from their name, image and likeness. Around the same time, the transfer portal changed. This change made it easier for players to move between schools without needing to sit out for an entire season. Together, those changes transformed roster building across college basketball.

Let's use the 2023-24 Tennessee team as an example. The Volunteers had an excellent year, making it all the way to the Elite Eight behind star player Dalton Knecht. He averaged 22 points per game and took home SEC player of the year honors, along with countless other awards for the incredible year he had. He was known as one of the most pro-ready players in the country at the time, and for good reason. He was a 22-year-old, 6’6” pure scorer, known for his incredible outside shooting and ability to space the floor. So why is this notable? Because he was in a much different position the year before.

In the 2022-23 season, Knecht played at the University of Northern Colorado, a school not known for their basketball prowess. They had a record of 12-20 and made it to the quarterfinals of the Big Sky conference tournament behind 20 points a night from Knecht. However, the next season they had a record of 19-14, without their former star player, Knecht.

Knecht left after his senior year and was able to take a fifth year at Tennessee. If this had happened before the transfer portal had opened, who is to say that Northern Colorado, with one of the best players in the country, would not be better than 19-14? If Knecht was not allowed to transfer and had to sit out for the 2023-24 season, he would have likely led Northern Colorado to an exciting run in March and cemented his name as one of the greatest Cinderella stories in recent memory.

Cases like this highlight how the transfer portal has reshaped the competitive structure of college basketball. In previous eras, players who transferred were required to sit out a season before becoming eligible. That rule discouraged many moves and often kept experienced players at the programs where they initially developed. Without that restriction, the sport now operates more like a free market for talent.

The data from my NCAA tournament matrices appears to reflect that shift.

This situation parallels the Gilded Age of the USA, a time in the USA known for extreme wealth concentration, monopolistic power, and a system so structurally tilted toward the already-wealthy that competition became an illusion. The Gilded Age wasn't an accident; it was what happens when capital operates freely inside an unequal system. John Rockefeller didn't just outcompete smaller refiners; he made it structurally impossible for them to survive.

College basketball's transfer portal is the same story. Wealthy programs don't just recruit better, they arrive after mid-majors have already done the developmental work, checkbook ready, and extract the proven asset. The mid-major absorbs the risk, the blue blood collects the reward.

The rich get richer. The poor get poorer. And without structural change, the gap will only keep growing.

-HB