March Madness Payouts Drive Mid-Majors to New Tourney Formats

It’s conference tournament season in men’s college basketball, and in the current Hunger Games–like environment of the sport, an increasing number of mid-majors are embracing complex event structures to put their best possible teams in March Madness.

Instead of a straight, bracket-style format, the American Conference moved this season to a 10-team stepladder structure, and it will advance its top two seeds straight to the semifinals. Just a pair of wins for each of them clinches a March Madness berth, while low seeds need to win as many as five games. 

Similarly, the Sun Belt Conference is now using a stepladder-style format for its ongoing tournament in which low-seed schools must win as many as seven games to win the title, as opposed to just two for the top two seeds. Those leading entrants—No. 1 Troy and No. 2 Marshall—have been placed directly in the semifinals. There was some chaos going into the tournament as there was a six-way regular-season tie for the second slot, requiring tiebreakers, but the overall format remains in place.  

A social media hashtag #StairwayToSeven then developed around the start of the Sun Belt tournament, though each of the lower seeds were eliminated by the second day of competition.

The Ohio Valley Conference has the same core format, favoring its top two teams, albeit in its smaller, eight-team tournament. Several other mid-major conferences, including the Atlantic 10 and Mountain West, have a series of single- and double-byes in the tournament structures.

Those entities, in part, follow the lead of the West Coast Conference, which has long used a staggered bracket that advances its top two seeds to the semifinals. That, in particular, has helped showcase the 22-time conference tournament champion, Gonzaga. 

The stepladder brackets “will reward our top seeds for their accomplishments during the regular season, ensuring they receive the advantage they’ve earned for their on-court performance,” Sun Belt Conference commissioner Keith Gill said upon the format’s introduction last season.

Money Behind the Madness

The underlying strategy fueling these moves is clear: Each March Madness unit is worth about $2 million to the participating conference, and advancing in the national tournament earns additional units. As a result, seeding is critical, as is being in the best possible position to not just appear in the dance but go further in the competition. 

That’s particularly true as many of these mid-majors have been reduced to one-bid status in March Madness, while power conferences such as the SEC have claimed a record number of bids.

Avoiding the March Madness First Four games in Dayton is also now key as the selection committee finalizes the bracket, as no team placed there has advanced to the Sweet 16 since UCLA in 2021. In the last three years, the 12 total teams that emerged from the First Four have gone a combined 3–9 in the round of 64. All four of the 2025 winners in the First Four were decidedly beaten in the next round. 

The downside of the restructured conference tournament situation, however, is the additional physical toll levied upon players. A team in these mid-major conferences can play as many as seven games in seven days—a level of strain far beyond the normal regular-season cadence in which a program typically plays two or three games a week.

“You ever see the movie Groundhog Day? [The game-day routine] is kind of like that,” said James Madison coach Preston Spradlin. “Except I’m not as funny as Bill Murray. Close, but not quite. But you wake up and do the same thing.”