In 2010, the Butler Bulldogs gave Duke the fight of its life in the national championship game, losing only after Gordon Heyward’s halfcourt heave bounced off the rim as time expired.
In 2013 and 2014, the Wichita State Shockers looked like a new men’s basketball powerhouse, following up a Final Four appearance by securing a No. 1 seed in the tournament.
Then as recently as 2023, the Florida Atlantic Owls made a miracle run to the Final Four in only the school’s second tournament appearance.
What Butler, Wichita State, Florida Atlantic and many other schools have in common is they belong to mid-major conferences. That is, schools who don’t belong to the NCAA’s Power Four of the Big Ten, SEC, ACC and Big 12.
For most of this century, one of the most exciting aspects of watching the men’s tournament is seeing a smaller school, that seemingly nobody could find on a map, make a deep run in March. The “Madness” moniker, arguably, is inspired by teams like Florida Gulf Coast, remembered as “Dunk City,” which became the first No. 15 seed to reach the Sweet 16 in 2013.
But for the second straight year, zero schools from a mid-major conference have made the Sweet 16 of the NCAA Tournament. It’s possible Cinderella’s foot no longer fits in the glass slipper.
“Look, where I came from, I came from a program that was a mid-major, that made itself into a major program,” Arizona coach Tommy Lloyd told reporters after his team beat Utah State in this year’s tournament.
Lloyd, who previously was an assistant for Gonzaga, continued: “I think that parity is great for the game, but things change. I think once finances become part of it, there’s going to be a breaking point for some of the lesser programs that just don’t have the finances.”
Indeed, many point to the NIL era as a reason for the potential death of the mid-major. Money has become a talking point during the tournament, even for schools who are relatively better off.
For example, when asked what needed to change for his program after the UCLA Bruins failed to make the Sweet 16, embattled head coach Mick Cronin said, “I’d like about 5 more million [dollars]. There’s my answer.”
Whatever the reasons are, the lack of mid-majors in back-to-back years is definitely an outlier in the men’s game, at least this century.
From the 2000 tournament through 2024, at least two schools outside of the Power Four made the Sweet 16. (Though it should be noted the distribution of talent was a little more widespread than the current mega-conference era. Did you know the Big Ten used to actually have only 10 schools?)
For much of this millennium, schools from the West Coast Conference, the Atlantic 10, and even the Missouri Valley and Mountain West were routinely making it to the Sweet 16.
Steve Kornacki hopes for upsets in his NCAA bracket
This year, the lowest ranked school among the final 16 teams is the No. 11 Texas Longhorns, who are hardly a David among Goliaths.
The Longhorns left the Big 12 for the SEC in 2024 as part of the college’s modern realignment craze. And in 2025, Texas spent nearly $376 million on its athletic department, a $50 million increase from the year before.
While the tournament appears to be lacking a certain je ne sais quoi due to the lack of upsets, at least for now, it doesn’t seem to be hurting the bottom line or turning away viewers.
According to Nielsen, the first full day of Round of 64 action averaged 9.8 million viewers, a 6% increase from last year and the largest audience ever recorded for the tournament’s true opening day.
Time will tell if the mid-major is really extinct or if these last two years were a random happenstance in a college landscape that continues to radically shift. For now, at least, it hasn’t seemed to turn people away from watching.
