Illini2010-11
- Sugar Grove
How would it cost them money exactly? They do not get direct proceeds from any of the bracket challenges.I honestly think this will cost the NCAA money long term. One of the biggest things that cause people to care about the tournament is picking your bracket. It is the biggest reason the NCAA will not consider reseeding the field for the sweet 16 or final 4.
Now to get the 12 over 5 upset you now have to pick the play in game and then the upset. It’s already hard enough to guess the upsets
No bracket challenge that I have ever seen has you selecting the winner of the play-in games. I cannot see why any bracket challenge would add in the play-in games as part of their brackets either. Most brackets have these games as "play-in" games to the field of 64. Unless the brackets gets rebranded as all teams not in the play-in games as "byes", then I doubt any of these above concerns will be an issue. I very rarely finish my brackets tweaks until 9 AM CT on Thursday morning, so none of these extra games will impact me at all.