Sweet 16: ACC Has Six Teams Left
The first full weekend of the NCAA Tournament has come to a close. The field started with 64 teams on Thursday and Sunday was whittled down to just the Sweet 16.
Four games will be played on Thursday and four others Friday which will narrow the field to the Elite Eight. Four of the eight will play Saturday and the other four Sunday. At the end of the weekend just the Final Four will remain.
One question on many people’s minds is how many members of the ACC will be playing in the Final Four. At present, the ACC is having an exceptional tournament with six teams from the conference reaching the Sweet 16.
Thus far, the ACC is a combined 12-1 in the tournament and the conference stands to make as much as $30 million.
The money comes from a basketball fund that has been set aside since 1991 by the NCAA that rewards conferences for their member teams advancing during the tournament.
Each game that is played in the tournament this year is valued at $265,791, which is paid out for the each of the next six years from 2017 through 2222. The number grows each year, when multiplied six times the worth of one game in the tournament ends up being $1.59 million.
Left in the tournament from the ACC is North Carolina, Duke, Virginia, Notre Dame, Miami and Syracuse. The only team from the seven in the conference picked to play that lost was Pittsburgh, which was beaten Friday by Wisconsin 47-43.
The ACC therefore has 13 units from the 13 games its member teams played in and another six from the Sweet 16 round. Nineteen units will add up to over $30 million during the payout of six years.
Since no team in the ACC will face one of its conference foes during the Sweet 16, all eight could conceivably reach the Elite Eight.
In 2015, the ACC was the only conference to ever guarantee itself over $30 million in one tournament. With one unit earned in each game with the exceptions of the title game, the ACC earned 21 units or more than $32.8 million.
The record for units earned during on NCAA Tournament by one conference is 24, set in 2009 by the Big East. During that season, five teams from the Big East reached the Sweet 16 with four moving on to the Elite Eight.
The fund is equally distributed to each member of the conference regardless if its team played in the tournament.
