It’s time to fill out brackets for the NCAA men’s basketball tournament. Whether your preferred method of filling out your bracket consists of using analytics, picking favorite colors, siding with the coolest mascots or taking the team with the cutest point guard, completing a bracket adds to the excitement that consumes college basketball fans as winter turns to spring.
The Big Ten Conference has been impressive in recent years. A Big Ten university has reached the Final Four in five of the last six seasons (more than any other conference), along with two runner up finishes.
With success on the court comes success financially as well.
The Big Ten Conference has ranked third in the nation each of the last three seasons in terms of revenue received from participating in the NCAA tournament. Only the American Athletic Conference (known as the Big East until 2013) and the Big 12 Conference earned more.
The NCAA annually distributes nearly half a billion dollars of revenue to Division I member institutions. Each year, 39 percent of the distributed revenue goes into the NCAA’s basketball fund.
Once a conference receives its portion of the basketball fund, the NCAA encourages, but does not require, each conference to split the revenue equally among its member institutions.
Kerry Kenny, director of compliance for the New York City office of the Big Ten, said the conference distributes the funds it receives evenly among its member schools.
After the 2013 men’s basketball season, the most recent revenue distribution, the basketball fund was allocated more than $188 million.
According to the NCAA, the basketball fund distributes its allocated funds among Division I conferences based on their performance in the Division I men’s basketball tournament over a six-year rolling period.
A conference earns a unit of revenue for each game it plays, not including the national championship game, according to the NCAA. This makes it important for conferences to get as many teams as possible into the tournament, but equally important is the success of each team in the tournament. A team making a Final Four run will earn its conference the same amount of money as five teams playing one game each.
