MoneyCall Newsletter 📈 | This is The Athletic’s weekly sports business newsletter. Sign up here to receive MoneyCall directly in your inbox. Read past editions here.
Welcome back to MoneyCall, The Athletic’s weekly sports business cheat sheet. Name-dropped today: Ezra Klein and Derek Thompson, JuJu Watkins and Paige Bueckers, Sixth Street, Bill Simmons, Savannah Bananas, Charlie Baker, Lindsay Schnell and more. Let’s go:
Driving the Conversation: Expanding to 96 teams is just good business
Priorities! If you’ve got a bracket or want yet another group to join, MoneyCall readers are welcome to join my ESPN group, “MoneyCall March.” Links here: men’s and women’s.
Meanwhile … in the wake of UNC’s blowout win last night in the First Four, is it fair that the five major conferences got 38 of the 68 bids to the men’s NCAA Tournament? College sports has never cared much about “fair,” but we can argue for more inclusion by citing something it does care about: 💰.
Limiting opportunities for success isn’t in the best interest of college basketball, which is part of why the Tournament has aggressively expanded over the years from 16 to 32 (1975) to 40 (1979) to 48 (1980) to 64 (1985) to 68 (2011). Expansion is in the DNA of March Madness.
This week…
