Power conferences such as the SEC are closer than ever to overtaking March Madness, though perhaps not quite in the way previously envisioned.
As conference tournaments begin in earnest this weekend, initial bracketology predictions show the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, and Big East are in line to claim a combined 39 of 68 men’s tournament spots. The SEC, which currently has eight teams in the Associated Press top-25 rankings, including No. 1 Auburn, could see 13 of its 16 members reach the tournament—a figure that would beat the current record of 11 bids set by the Big East in 2011. A 14th SEC program, Texas, is additionally a bubble team.
The Big Ten, with five top-25 teams, similarly has 11 potential March Madness bids in initial projections.
The shifts partly reflect the continued impact of a frenetic wave of conference realignment that dominated college sports in the spring and summer of 2024. In particular, Oklahoma and Texas began SEC play last year; the Big Ten brought in Oregon, UCLA, USC, and Washington; the Big 12 added Arizona, Arizona State, Colorado, and Utah; and the ACC added Cal, SMU, and Stanford. Four of those 13 newly realigned schools are likely March Madness participants, with two more on the bubble.
Consolidating Power
Such shifts had seismic impacts on the College Football Playoff, and still do. The effects are also reaching basketball.
For comparison, last year’s March Madness in men’s college basketball included 33 total teams across those five conferences, as well as the Pac-12 Conference before it was gutted to just two members, Oregon State and Washington State, in advance of a subsequent rebuilding to eight schools in 2026.
A year ago, SEC commissioner Greg Sankey openly questioned the merit of March Madness automatic qualifiers for smaller conferences. Fast-forward to today, and that type of radical reformation has not happened—though conversations continue toward a potential expansion or restructuring of the tournament format that would start as soon as 2026. Still, Sankey’s fear of what he viewed as deserving teams being squeezed out of the tournament hardly seems to be happening with the likely historic influx of tournament bids.
Such pull toward the major conferences can also be seen in the NCAA’s NET Rankings. Even the SEC’s last-place team, South Carolina, still holds a No. 88 national ranking despite a 12–18 overall record, 2–15 inside the conference, and 1–9 on the road.
Last year, each tournament unit—the NCAA’s formula for allocating event revenue—was worth about $2 million, making the financial stakes of March Madness bids large for any involved school.
In the meantime, there is scarcely an at-large bid foreseeable for mid-major conferences such as the American or Atlantic 10, even with multiple schools there enjoying strong seasons—making the upcoming conference tournaments all the more critical.
