The Sentinel-Record

NCAA Tournament upsets worth big bucks

- RALPH D. RUSSO

made more than history in the NCAA Tournament.

By becoming the first No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1, the Retrievers made about $1.7 million for the America East Conference. Loyola-Chicago’s buzzer-beating run to the Sweet 16 will be worth double that to the Missouri Valley Conference. Nevada’s consecutiv­e comebacks were also worth about $3.4 million for the Mountain West. The Missouri Valley and Mountain West will pocket at least as much from NCAA Tournament units as the Pac-12, which had three teams in the field, all bounced after one game each.

Units are what the NCAA calls its revenue distributi­ons from the basketball performanc­e fund, which rewards teams for tournament performanc­e. The NCAA Tournament generates more than $700 million in revenue for the associatio­n and its schools, the vast majority from its media rights deal with CBS and Turner.

Units for this year’s tournament are worth approximat­ely $273,000, according to the NCAA, but their value ends up being greater than that.

The units are paid out annually each of the next six years, increasing in value each year by about 2-3 percent. The payout system means that one upset by UMBC should be worth more than $1.7 million. Units are earned every game a team appears in, with the exception of the first game played by an automatic qualifier and the NCAA championsh­ip game.

The money goes to the conference­s, unless the school is an independen­t in basketball. The NCAA encourages equal distributi­on by conference­s among its members, but it is not required. Most do.

The Missouri Valley has in the past received multiple bids, but only champion Loyola-Chicago got in as an automatic qualifier this year. The conference distribute­s the units revenue equally among 10 members — though the NCAA Tournament participan­ts receive an additional halfshare to cover travel expenses, MVC spokesman Ryan Davis said Sunday.

The Atlantic Coast Conference has been rolling in units in recent years, with a total of 64 from 201517, worth more than $100 million. This season, the ACC got nine teams into the field, more than any other conference, and placed four teams in Sweet 16. Two of them — Duke and Syracuse — play in the regional semifinals, limiting the conference’s earning potential.

The Big 12 also placed four teams in the round of 16. The Southeaste­rn Conference and Big Ten each have two.

For the ACC — and other Power Five conference­s — NCAA units account for less than 10 percent of conference revenue. The ACC reported $373.4 million in revenue for fiscal year 2016 — most of which comes from a television rights deals with ESPN — and paid out about $25 million to each of its members.

For low-major Division I schools such as UMBC and the eight other members of the America East, those units are real money.

UMBC’s athletic budget for 2017 was $9.3 million. NCAA records from 2010-15 show the America East earned a total of eight units and $2,086,514 in basketball revenue.

Over that same period of time, the Missouri Valley earned 21 units and $5,477,099. The Mountain West earned 33 and $8,606,870.

All that money helps explain why the American Athletic Conference lured tournament-regular Wichita

State from the Missouri Valley last year, despite the Shockers not having a football team, and why the Mountain West is trying to strike a similar deal to pull Gonzaga out of the West Coast Conference.

The Shockers went out in the first round, upset by Marshall, Conference USA’s only

 ?? The Associated Press ?? GOLDEN RETRIEVERS: UMBC’s Jourdan Grant celebrates after a basket against Virginia Friday during the Retrievers’ historic 74-54 upset in Charlotte, N.C., to become the first 16-seed to ever defeat a No. 1 seed in the men’s NCAA Tournament. The upset...
The Associated Press GOLDEN RETRIEVERS: UMBC’s Jourdan Grant celebrates after a basket against Virginia Friday during the Retrievers’ historic 74-54 upset in Charlotte, N.C., to become the first 16-seed to ever defeat a No. 1 seed in the men’s NCAA Tournament. The upset...

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