When Dayton advanced to the Elite Eight this year, people all across the country started calling them this tournament’s “Cinderella Story”. In the tournament, whenever the underdog wins, it illustrates that in college basketball, anything can happen on any given day. Just because a program is full of top recruits doesn’t mean they will be properly prepared for a school in an unheard of conference. The unpredictability is what makes college basketball so fascinating. That’s why people tune in. 

Last year the Cinderella team was 15-seed Florida Gulf Coast. Unless you didn’t tune into a single game in last year’s tournament, you know whom I’m talking about. It was the team that took America by storm when they introduced the NBA version of “Lob City” to the collegiate level. In laymen’s terms, they did a lot of alley-oops, and it was awesome. You just couldn’t keep your eyes off them because they were so damn fun to watch. While they didn’t advance to the Elite Eight like Dayton, they created just as much buzz in a smaller amount of time.

There are other legitimate benefits and even negatives when it comes to looking at what Cinderella teams mean for the most entertaining three weeks of the year.

America’s fascination with Cinderella stories is quite evident. The T.V. ratings for the Butler-VCU Final Four matchup in 2011, between two mid-major schools, “was the second-highest viewer average for the first Final Four game since 2006,” according to Turner Sports. To further the point, that 2006 game was between Florida and? You guessed it, a mid-major school in George Mason.

When Cinderella teams advance, they grab America’s hearts, viewers begin cheering for players and coaches that they’ve never heard of. In 2011, America watched as VCU senior guard Joey Rodriguez blossomed into a superstar during the tournament and led his 11th-seeded Rams all the way to the Final Four.  In 1998, we witnessed the heroics of Valparaiso guard Bryce Drew, who nailed a three-pointer at the buzzer to take down fourth seeded Ole Miss in the first round.

If it weren’t for the tournament, they’d just be run-of-the-mill college basketball players instead of household names.

Before the 2010 tournament, former Butler head coach Brad Stevens, now with the Boston Celtics, was under the radar. Then, after taking his Bulldogs to two straight championship games, he became the model for coaching success at the collegiate level.

Marquette head coach Buzz Williams said Stevens was, “Everything that is right about our profession.” While Syracuse coach, Jim Boeheim, called Stevens, “The best young coach I have seen in my time.”  That’s the type of praise one gets when their team does well in March.

Cinderella teams also strike a personal cord with Americans, because it’s easy to watch one succeed in the tournament and be able to relate it to your life somehow, especially if you’ve ever been the underdog that came out on top.

While upsets generate a lot of support from the average fan, it could be argued that they bring more disruption to the tournament than excitement.

As history has proven, Cinderella teams will never win it all. Since the tournament started with the traditional 1 through 16 seeding in 1985, the lowest seed ever to win the tournament was 8th seeded Villanova back in 1985, which is by no means an unheard of program. In addition, since 1967, only one mid-major school (one that isn’t part of the traditional ACC, Big 10, Big 12, SEC, Pac 12 and Big East) has won it all, which was UNLV back in 1990.

Since it’s nearly impossible for a Cinderella Story to be the last team standing, because it’s never been done before, then are they really worth all the hype?

Occasionally, Cinderella teams can even end up hurting the schools economically. When programs without a lot of tournament experience advance far into the tournament, they have hard times paying for the added costs associated with success. They just don’t generate as much yearly profit as schools like Duke and UNC.

As Chris Smith, a writer for Forbes, said, “Four teams – Wichita State last year, Florida State in 2011, Davidson in 2008 and George Mason in 2006 – went from being profitable teams to losing money after a tournament run.”

While these “negatives” may not have changed your opinion on the subject, it’s just something to think about moving forward.  It makes sense, though, that nothing about the tournament, including Cinderella stories, is crystal clear. After all, it’s called March Madness for a reason.