No real Cinderella team competes in the people’s Sweet 16 for the first time since 2019!
A handful of schools—including Oakland, Duquesne, Yale and Grand Canyon—had the option. Even Yale, which has a$ 40 billion endowment, could have earned a rare underdog status by winning the Ivy League’s second consecutive Sweet 16 title after Princeton did so last year. Nevertheless, fans are left with 15 big- meeting teams plus Gonzaga, who is no one’s description of a lovely college basketball underdog story.
The few smaller schools that sucked up higher seeds in the first round must presently leverage in their waning spotlight. These advantages may include new sponsors, increased shirts sales, and increased enrollment, or something as straightforward as educating people about the location of your school.

A little school’s best chance of achieving name recognition is perhaps the most effective way to do so when they pull off a March Madness disturbed. Alaska appears to believe otherwise.
After losing to NC State on Saturday, Oakland head coach Greg Kampe said,” I think we’re great for school basketball.” ” I think there’s 360 some Tier I instructors. That’s all the work there are in the country, and I may say a lot of those people are angry, never of Oakland or never of what we do and not of me, but of our team”.
No. 14 Oakland had the greatest chance of becoming Cinderella this year, outperforming No. 3 Kentucky before ultimately losing to the Wolfpack. Although Oakland is over, the Michigan- based class is working to improve business prospects. Its sun person Jack Gohlke forged NIL deals with Turbo Tax and Buffalo Wild Arms after his team was eliminated.
These institutions and those who might be in this place next time you take a lot of training from recent Cinderellas on how to stay relevant. Although, as mentioned earlier, time is of the essence.
Just the second-ranked team, the FDU men’s basketball team, joined an exclusive membership in 2023. 16 plant to fight a No. When the crew defeated No. 1 plant in the men’s NCAA game, the team was first. 1 Purdue in the 2023 event. The success put the small, rural New Jersey college in the national spotlight, significantly like UMBC did when it defeated No. 1 plant Virginia in 2018.
In 2023, according to FDU athletic chairman Brad Hurlbut, the school is in a much better place than it was when it won the agency’s first NCAA game game, a First Four appearance in Dayton, in 2019.
” Nobody was ready to capitalize ( on ) it”, Hurlbut said of FDU’s 2019 tourney appearance.
Hurlbut began preparing for FDU maybe being a Cinderella team in order to avoid making the same error again when the crew was off to a strong start in the Northeast Conference in January 2023.
He met with 12 FDU brass colleagues, including chief operating officer Jason Young and another college leaders, at a meeting with him. They discussed how to approach students, encourage sales at the college bookstore, and sensibilize FDU fans from all over the world. For the first time in history, a gathering like this was held.

” Very simply, it’s something schools may perform every year about this period”, Hurlbut said.
If FDU pulled off an unhappy, the goal was to find ways FDU may capitalize on business and educational opportunities, which was a huge if.
” Everyone was excited about what could happen”, Hurlbut said. ” And then when it did occur, we were able to do on a lot of those stuff”.
Hurlbut straight attributes the Knights ‘ success in the event to FDU signing a five-year area naming rights agreement with Bogota Saving Bank, the first such naming agreement in school history. Hurlbut and Young declined to provide financial information regarding the Bogota contract. Additionally, a former FDU athlete gave an anonymous payment of$ 25, 000 to FDU Athletics.
According to Young, in the two weeks following the Purdue upset, university bookstore sales increased by 327 % and enrollment increased by 27 %. He added that some Indiana fans speculated that the FDU T-shirts were Indiana University students hurling hue at conference and state rival Purdue after the game when they purchased them afterward.
When Hurlbut left FDU in 2019, he no longer wanted the institution to become known as Fairleigh Dickinson University. Fans at Nationwide Arena chant “FDU” chants as the hours passed in the Knights ‘ geological victory over the Boilermakers, and more than 4 million watched from home.
Again in 2022, Saint Peter’s went further than any No. In the NCAA Tournament, Purdue defeated Kentucky, Murray State, and Purdue to approach the Elite Eight, earning it the 15th plant plant.
Previous Saint Peter’s Advertising Rachelle Paul, now the top women’s superintendent at the University of Miami, said Cinderella teams really enjoy what they accomplished but echoed FDU’s attitudes about preparation. Like FDU in 2019, Paul acknowledged that Saint Peter’s was unprepared for the media outcry and renewed prominence after beating Blue-blood Kentucky in the first round.
” Even if you think there’s a slender chance it could be your team, get ready”, Paul said over the telephone. ” We were n’t ready, we were n’t prepared … we really were making decisions and getting people ready on the fly”.
Some mid- disciplines such as Saint Peter’s run little sport departments, where a few people wear several hats. Rich Ensor, a former commissioner of the Metro Atlantic Athletic Conference ( MAAC ), said winning presented challenges for Saint Peter’s and advises future Cinderellas to be prepared for the obstacles presented by the attention-grabbing crowd.
Ensor sent some of his public relations staff from the Buffalo regional to Indianapolis to help with the spotlight when the Peacocks defeated Murray State to reach the Sweet 16.
Peacock, an NBC streaming service, capitalized on the branding synergy by supporting the school in a variety of ways. According to Business Insider, that included arranging for the Saint Peter’s spirit team to travel to tournament games when they learned the team was n’t coming, and helping the campus bookstore create merchandise and help transport students from Jersey City, New Jersey, to Philadelphia.
The success of the tournament helped the school and players, some of whom were able to secure NIL deals while playing, brand awareness. One day during the tournament, Ensor and his wife were chatting with a cashier at a furniture store when they were asked,” Hey, how about Saint Peter’s?” not knowing that the cashier was speaking directly to the MAAC commissioner.
On the financial side, Saint Peter’s received a portion of the conference revenue share—called a “unit”, which comes from the NCAA. For each game its team plays in the tournament, conferences receive an additional unit that can be used for anything they choose. Each payment is made in total of about$ 2 million over a six-year period.
Ensor claimed in his final year as the commissioner of the MAAC that he used the unit payments to upgrade the broadcasting equipment and software in the member schools.
While Oakland won the March 21 game against Kentucky to win the national spotlight. Beyond this month, the impact of its victory might not be as strong.
After the Saturday loss to NC State, Oakland forward Trey Townsend stated,” People now hopefully will know that we’re not in California and we’re from Michigan.” ” I always wanted to come here, hang banners, and create these memories, and put Oakland on the map. And to say that we did that, it’s such a special thing”.