March Madness tips off today, and with it, millions around the country will tune in to see which team will become this year’s Cinderella story. Against all odds, each and every year, teams from small schools with players that 98 percent of people have never heard of face up against and beat “blue blood” schools with multiple NBA-bound players. It’s a tradition as old as March Madness itself. You could even argue that these Cinderella stories are precisely what gives March its Madness. Without them, not only would March Madness become far more tame, but sports culture as we know it would begin to lose some of its vitality.
When we see these underdogs achieve the seemingly unachievable, we witness the best parts of sports on display. Yet it does seem that the “March Magic” we know and love is fading. If you’ve sensed this over the last few years, it’s not without cause. From 2000 to 2021, an average of 3.2 mid-major Cinderella-esque teams danced all the way to the Sweet Sixteen. Since then, however, that number has fallen to just 1.5. Last year, Cinderella missed the Sweet Sixteen ball completely! So what happened in the last five years?
There appear to be two primary catalysts to this shift: the introduction of Name, Image, and Likeness (NIL) deals in 2021, which allow players to receive compensation from third-party boosters and brands, and the 2025 House v. NCAA ruling, which allows schools to directly share revenue with athletes. These changes, without the proper due process, not only run the risk of letting Cinderella’s stepmother permanently keep her from the ball, but they also threaten sports and much of what is good in them.
In order to understand just how drastically things have changed in the last five years, consider some of the newest transfer portal statistics. Prior to the NIL era, less than 15 percent of the mid-major all-conference players transferred to a larger school after a breakout season. That number is now closer to 75 percent. The overall number of transfer requests across all men’s basketball players, regardless of school or performance, has increased by approximately 142 percent. Unfortunately, these trends are not isolated to the collegiate level: They’re already trickling down into youth sports. While it once was a yellow flag to recruiters if a high school player transferred schools, it now appears to be the standard. For the class of 2025, roughly 50 percent of the top fifty high school prospects transferred schools at least once before graduation. However, the players aren’t the ones primarily at fault.
Instead of building virtue, both natural and supernatural, sports will begin to tear it down.
For many collegiate athletes, they simply want more playing time in an expanded role, which has always been a motivator for transferring. For many others, though, this is a strategic game of Monopoly. In a gamified system, can we really blame them? An average mid-major school may have a total roster budget ranging between $200,000 to $2.3 million to be divided among the team. Not too shabby. Now, compare that with the average “blue blood” school, which operates with a budget nearly eighteen times larger. Regardless of relationships or school pride, many of these young athletes are on their way to the highest bidder who can vaguely promise them opportunity. At the surface level, it would seem everyone benefits from this system: Teams have greater access to talent, and players have greater playing and financial opportunities. Yet, below the surface, it does significant damage to Cinderella story–worthy mid-major universities and ultimately puts at risk the foundation of what makes sports so good for both the body and soul.
At all levels, sports are nearly universally understood as serving more than just the body. They are also one of the modern world’s fundamental ways of instilling positive character attributes in children. Teamwork, resilience, patience, loyalty, and many other valuable character attributes are inherently built into sports. By habituating these attributes, sports help prepare children to properly contribute to the common good. The great Pope St. John Paul II was particularly fond of sports; however, he wisely recognized they are not merely good at making earthly citizens but something more:
Sports are a school of loyalty, courage, endurance, resoluteness, universal brotherhood—all natural virtues, but which provide the supernatural virtues with a solid foundation, and prepare us to bear the burden of the most serious responsibilities without weakness.
It is here we discover the true purpose of sports: an earthly means to a heavenly end. Cinderella teams have historically been built upon the foundation of older, experienced players, who have committed to a program and system for years, facing off against young, inexperienced players. Players from both teams played with a sense of pride in not only the name on the back of their jersey but on the front as well. All of the natural virtues Pope St. John Paul II spoke of—loyalty, courage, endurance, resoluteness, and brotherhood—are necessarily present in a Cinderella story team. In fact, it is often precisely these attributes that give them the edge over their NBA-bound counterparts. Yet the unbridled commodification of players and sports at the collegiate level now incentivizes players to forget the name on the front of the jerseys, and these natural virtues alongside them, to focus primarily on the name on the back. If they’re successful, they leave everyone in the dust for bigger and better places. If they’re not, they simply pull the escape hatch and look for a fresh start somewhere new. You can see how this environment quickly cultivates a sports culture that is a far cry from what Pope St. John Paul II admired so dearly.
Due to the lack of guardrails and regulations, sports are becoming merely a means to financial gain. Mix this with the age-old issue of athletes mistaking who they are for what they do, and you have a recipe for disaster. Instead of building virtue, both natural and supernatural, sports will begin to tear it down. Athletes will increasingly trade long-term value, both personal and financial, for immediate cash or the path of least resistance.
Unfortunately, the system these young men and women have inherited exploits their inexperience by continuously offering them greener pastures. This will not result in greater competition or better athlete well-being. Competition will soon be limited to the powerful few with the biggest budgets, which, besides effectively taking all the Madness out of March, will further encourage players to play for the name on the back of the jersey until they make the newly established super-conference. Athlete well-being will be an afterthought to winning, and the value gained from a coach’s consistent presence, care, and work through trials and adversity will be lost.
As collegiate athletes slowly embrace a more immediate gratification mindset—which encourages an egocentric, survive-at-all-costs approach to sports—all of culture will feel the effects. Just as the transfer trends have begun to impact high school sports, this disposition will slowly find its way into youth sports. However, these effects are not limited to the field of play. Ultimately, the real cost of these trends is that they will produce a disloyal, fragile, and individualistic generation of adults unprepared for the real world; these trends will eventually damage the common good. This is why intervention is so critical. Without it, sports and athletes will slowly continue to warp into something unrecognizable.
Thankfully, no longer is it just the voice of mid-major coaches suffering the tangible consequences of having their players poached each year sounding the alarm. Legendary Alabama football coach Nick Saban has become an advocate for several reforms at the collegiate and federal levels. His proposed vision seems to be the best of both worlds, whereby players can benefit from their NIL and performance while still being forced to commit to their long-term development. Players would be forced to sign revenue-sharing contracts with schools for a set number of years to prevent constant transfer, which would enable coaches and schools to better invest in and develop players both on and off the field of play. The government would enforce national NIL standards to prevent bidding wars that mid-major schools have no chance in, which would protect mid-majors and the integrity of competition. The NCAA would add incentives to academic performance and loyalty, such as graduating or staying at one school, further encouraging players to consider their long-term future more intentionally. Saban is actively working with US government officials to lobby some of these ideas into reality, and while none of them are a silver bullet, they would be a significant move in the right direction, making sports about forming the entire person and preparing them for life.
While it is unclear if Saban’s proposals or something similar will be adopted any time soon, it is clear what is at stake if they are not. It is not simply the loss of the bracket-busting moments or the elimination of mid-major programs as we know it; it is the loss of a once-vibrant school of virtue. Cinderella stories represent the best of this school of virtue. They must embody natural virtues—dedication, loyalty, courage, brotherhood—in their play to even have a chance at dancing past round one, let alone to the Sweet Sixteen and beyond. We find ourselves awestruck, captivated, inspired, and even a bit encouraged by their ability to achieve the seemingly unachievable. It would appear now, though, that Cinderella has once again lost her shoe, but those who found it are deciding whether to search for her or sell it to the highest bidder. If the latter is chosen, we’ll see impacts to the field of play: Competition will be centralized, talent gaps will grow, and mid-majors as we know them will be eliminated. More significantly, however, will be the changes that continue off the field of play, as players become more individualistic, fragile, and distrusting. For the sake of sports, all who play them, and the common good, we must find a way to keep the Madness in March.