March Madness 2026
Hear it here!
It’s time for March Madness, which used to be known as the NCAA Basketball Championship tournament.
The term March Madness has taken over because it is accurate and exciting. After four play-in games, the field of 64 teams will duel in a one-and-done format to decide who rules college basketball this year.
What sets the three-week bonanza apart is the fact that teams face their opponent in a single game.
If you win you move on, if you lose, you’re out. That’s why there is always the specter of a Cinderella team knocking off a favorite which happens every year. But when the Final Four arrives, usually the best teams are still alive, and Cinderella is nowhere to be found. The best teams going in are Duke, Arizona, Michigan and Florida.
We’ve written about the tournament from many angles at this time of year so while our readers and listeners probably don’t recall the details, we’ll refrain from going over them again.
Of course, my alma mater, Syracuse University, once virtually a perennial tournament entry and for many seasons a title contender, have been absent from March Madness for five years now.
Syracuse athletics are at a crossroads. They recently hired a new Athletic Director and are in the hunt for a new head basketball coach. Adrian Autry was relieved of his duties after the Orange suffered their second consecutive losing season. It was once a joke to even consider the hoopsters would lose more than they won.
The question was, how far can Syracuse go? They’ve won one national championship, have been to many Final Fours, and have seriously contended for many other campaigns. All of those were under the legendary head coach Jim Boeheim. Autry, who was a star point guard and assistant coach under Boeheim couldn’t continue the run, but as we now know in college athletics, it’s not solely the coach’s fault.
When we say it’s all about money in college athletics nothing more needs to be said. It was all about money when my school fled the Big East for the Atlantic Coast Conference, with football always in the forefront. And it’s all about money now for the players who because of Name, Image, Likeness, better known as NIL, are raking in hundreds of thousands, even millions to play college ball. What do teenagers know about the value of those kind of payments that’s foreign to me. It’s an unhealthy situation that nobody seems to know how to fix.
To make it worse, those same enriched athletes can decide to transfer if they don’t like their situation once they get to college.
And there is no limit how many times they can transfer. Crazy. College athletics are in a bad way.
Every school in every conference in America is affected by this, but Syracuse has a real problem.
There is a limit to what can be gathered to pay players to perform for SU. Is there any way my school can compete with the likes of Duke, North Carolina, Clemson, Florida State, you name it, and battle on even terms?
What about competing with the rest of the country, like the Big Ten and SEC for quality players?
The pool is limited and it’s a dilemma for the Orange.
Once upon a time, high school basketball stars would be impressed by Syracuse’s reputation, playing in the JMA Dome, and playing for Jim Boeheim, a Hall of Fame coach who won a thousand games. Now, it’s how much can you pay me?
Syracuse may have its limitations, but they’ve gone out and hired a 41-year-old visionary named Bryan Blair as its new Athletic Director. Blair’s specialty is dealing with the NIL issue. He has had a proven track record at Toledo and now embarks on fixing the basketball situation and strengthening the football program, which needs it as well, in these troubling times.
Now it’s time to select a coach. Autry had huge shoes to fill. There are many deserving candidates out there and I know that the administration looks first at those who are either former players, those who have other past connections to the program or are familiar with the upstate NY region and have a feel for what coaching a school like Syracuse entails.
Recruiting is always the key, but a coach has to win. Recruiting now involves money and that’s where Blair comes in. But after all that, Syracuse must find a head coach who can compete with the powers of the Atlantic Coast Conference. Perhaps this is the time for the Orange to go outside its sphere and bring someone in who may have no previous connections with the school or the area and start fresh all the way around.
It was interesting that Boeheim noted that the three ACC schools who fired their coaches, Syracuse, Boston College and Georgia Tech, had the lowest NIL budget to acquire players.
I realize that joining the Atlantic Coast Conference has been a financial windfall for Syracuse, but when I see the intensity of the rivalry between UConn and St. John’s, I yearn for the good old days when the Big East was an ultra-competitive conference involving schools in the same geographical area, and there were rivalries galore.
But times do change and they have, and football is king. There are four power conferences, and the Big East is not one of them.
So, while Syracuse takes the steps to become a factor in college basketball again, March Madness gets underway. But there’s that elephant in the room that is becoming more and more significant, and that is betting.
What was once a fun pastime to fill out brackets in advance for those who follow the game or not, serious betting has emerged as both a huge money-maker and danger.
From this week until April 6, there were will be virtual wall-to-wall action on the courts, a bettor’s dream who wish to put their money down on game activity that goes well beyond who wins and by how many points.
I worry about the danger of betting done by people, especially youngsters, in particular, who may not know when to say when and face the reality of losing money they can’t afford to lose. It involves all sports, as we know, but with the schedule of so many games in so many days in the NCAA basketball tournament, this is a glorious time for those who like to wager, and an alarming time for those who could be hurt.
Yes, March Madness has changed. What was once a 24-team field as I remember in the 50’s, to a possible expansion to 76 teams next year, and the vast betting explosion, March Madness remains a special time on the sports calendar. And it ends the same way every year, with one school cutting down the nets and celebrating as the national college basketball champion.
March Madness Bracket
New Syracuse A.D.
Adrian Autry and Jim Boeheim
