Saint Peter’s University will not win the 2022 National Championship. Nor should they. They don’t deserve it. The Peacocks (really?) entered the tournament a meager 19-11, with 6 of their losses coming in the lowly MAAC (the Metro Athletic Atlantic Conference in case you’d never heard of it; I had to look it up too)[1], a conference that has never had a team reach the Elite 8 until this year. They say it’s more important to just win when it matters, which to their credit, the Peacocks have done. But in all objectivity, they’re just a mediocre team who got hot at the right time and captured a nation’s collective heart.
The “Cinderella” has become a staple of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship every March. And yet, every time a double-digit seed makes a run, we act like it’s the greatest thing since sliced bread. The nature of a tournament that features win-or-go-home games every time you step on the floor is that we’ll see massive upsets and surprise runs like we saw with George Mason in 2006, Butler in 2010 and 2011, VCU in 2011, and Oral Roberts in 2021. It’s part of the charm of the NCAA tournament, but it’s also a curse: teams that had great regular seasons like Kentucky did this year lose their chance to win a championship with one bad day at the beach.
Notice something about all the above teams? None of them won the championship (although Butler came close in 2010). And in reality, we’ll never see a Cinderella win the big dance. Because eventually, a school with better athletes, coaches, pedigree and facilities; more money, scholarships, and NIL offers; extensive history, tradition, and fanbases will beat them. And likely they will do it soundly, like UNC just did to St. Pete.
For the first time in my twenty years of fawning over March Madness I have questioned whether or not these Cinderallas are actually good for the tournament. Try and convince me that you were just so psyched about VCU vs. Butler in the 2011 Final Four[2]. You know we all would have rather seen Florida/Kansas in the National Semifinals. It’s just better basketball at the end of the day. There’s a reason that the “Blue Bloods” like Kansas, Kentucky, Duke, North Carolina, Michigan State and UCLA are Blue Bloods: they have better athletes, coaches, pedigree… what I said before. And that’s what we want, is it not? Better quality of play? There’s a reason ESPN and CBS put the SEC and Big Ten on national television every week and the Missouri Valley is nowhere to be found.
I’m not arguing for the Bob Huggins approach to ditch non-major conferences altogether. Making the NCAA tournament is an experience that kids from Vermont and Wright State will never forget. The darlings of March will continue to show up at the dance, but if the slipper fits are we actually better off?