March Madness Daily: Purdue is the only pure team left
While fans focus on this year, college basketball is already moving on.
Welcome back to Club Sportico, where we break down the intersection of sports and money—with an extra bit of humor and opinion. Here’s a different way to look at the Sweet Sixteen.
Eben: If you needed any more evidence that the college sports needs a dramatic overhaul, the NCAA’s transfer portal opened on Monday. In the middle of March Madness (and other smaller postseason tournaments), players are now forced to make quick decisions about their futures. Coaches, too. Recruiting for next year is happening while many teams are still playing.
How important has the transfer portal become to college sports? Look at this beautiful graphic 👇 made by X user NCAABuzzerBtrs. These are the starting lineups for the 16 teams left in the tournament based on the first program they played for. Some are obvious to identify—Duke 👿 and Michigan State ⚔️ start four players that they original brought to college basketball. BYU 🐱 and Houston 🐈 start three.
Then there’s a whole bunch that have one or zero. The team on the far upper right with the Kentucky player? That’s not Kentucky 🐱, that’s Arkansas 🐗. Kentucky is on the bottom, second from the right, with no original Wildcats but players from Drexel 🐲 and Delaware 🐔. I challenge you to find Michigan.
The team that really jumps out, however, is obviously Purdue 🚂. The Boilermakers are the only team left that is rolling out a starting lineup of no transfers. Apparently the first three off the bench for Purdue are also originals.
Clemson football coach Dabo Swinney, who originally refused to use the transfer portal, would be proud!
Programming note: We’ll be sending daily business nuggets throughout the NCAA tournaments. If that’s not your thing, you can opt out of daily March Madness posts by updating your settings here or with the button below. We’ll return to normal programming in April.
Club Sportico is a community organized by Sportico, a digital media company launched in 2020 to cover the business side of sports. You can read breaking news, smart analysis, and in-depth features from Eben, Jacob and their colleagues at Sportico.com, and listen to the Sporticast podcast wherever you get your audio. Contact us at club@sportico.com.