For College Players, Millions Can Be Made During March Madness

I'm a multimillionaire! Oh, and we're going to the Elite Eight, I guess.

The NCAA men’s basketball tournament is one of the biggest events in sports each year. Short of the Super Bowl, World Series, and NBA Finals, I can’t think of anything more heavily hyped and watched, including the playoffs of each of those sports. When March Madness games are showing, workplace productivity plummets nationwide. (Admit it. When Murray State’s Danero Thomas hit his buzzer-beater to oust Vanderbilt, you were watching, even though you were still supposed to be working at 4:30 PM EST.) It’s exciting, compelling viewing, and it’s worth its weight in gold to the organizers.

What a pity, then, that the players themselves don’t see a cent of those millions of dollars. The people directly responsible for shocking, legendary upsets like Ohio over Georgetown and Northern Iowa over Kansas do all the work but see none of the profits. It hardly seems fair, does it?

It doesn’t. For a few players, however, March is a time when millions of dollars can be made. NBA scouts are watching, and like it or not, they subconsciously weigh performance in March more than the regular season. If you’re just going to play four outstanding games in your college career, the last two weeks of March is an excellent time to play them.

Take a look at Stephen Curry. By all accounts, he had a tremendous career at Davidson. During his three years as a Wildcat, he averaged 25.3 points a game on 46.7% shooting. Pretty impressive, but that’s not why he was drafted so highly. No, the reason he was drafted seventh overall was because in his four games in the 2008 NCAA tournament, he blistered his opponents for 40, 30, 33, and 25 points. That averages to 32 points per game. Before that scorching performance led Davidson to the cusp of the Final Four (remember, they came within seconds of knocking off eventual champion Kansas that year), scouts were projecting Curry as a late first-round or early second-round pick.

Jumping twenty to thirty slots in the draft order makes a big difference, trust me. Since the NBA has a salary scale for rookies, Curry went from a non-guaranteed contract (as a potential second-round pick) to a three-year guaranteed contract worth an average of $2.4 million per year. And all of that based on his (admittedly fantastic) performance in just four games.

Essentially, he increased his net worth by $1.8 million for every game he played in the 2008 tournament.

Curry’s hardly the only example. Reaching back a bit further, we find Miami of Ohio’s Wally Szczerbiak, whose stellar play during the 1999 tournament (including a 43/10 performance in the first round against Washington) boosted him to a number six draft selection. Western Kentucky’s Courtney Lee led the Hilltoppers to a Sweet Sixteen berth in 2008, earning him the 22^nd spot in the 2008 draft (and a starting spot in the NBA Finals for Orlando). Patrick O’Bryant of Bradley torched Kansas and Pitt in 2006 and found himself drafted ninth overall that same year.

Okay, so we know that a few killer games in March can earn you a lot of money. But can the opposite happen? What if a great player has a stink bomb of a game in March and his team is eliminated? Can a player lose himself millions of dollars with one bad game?

It’s a little trickier to prove this, but I think it’s reasonable to assume this happens. Let’s consider Georgetown’s Roy Hibbert. The Hoyas made a surprising run to the 2007 Final Four, after which many thought Hibbert would leave for the NBA, since he was projected as a lottery pick.(Again, four great games could have earned him millions.) Instead, Hibbert said he had “unfinished business” at Georgetown and decided to return for his junior year. The Hoyas were primed for a deep run in 2008 as a 2 seed, but ran into Curry’s Wildcats in the second round and were unceremoniously bounced. Hibbert only managed six points (and five fouls!) in 16 minutes.

Disappointed, Hibbert declared for the draft. Where he was once a lottery pick (probably top ten), he fell to the 17^th spot. So how much money did he lose with that loss to Davidson? For simplicity, let’s assume that Hibbert would have been drafted tenth in 2007. He passed up a contract that would have been worth $5.2 million (over three years) for one worth $3.9 million. Essentially, that one sub-par performance cost him $1.3 million dollars.

Now, Roy Hibbert is a good player. He does an excellent job for the Indiana Pacers, and he’s certainly earning every penny of his contract. And, to be fair, he didn’t have a great game against Davidson. Had he stepped up, there’s a great chance Georgetown would have won. So is it fair for him to have lost so much money based on one bad performance?

No, probably not. But that’s the way the system works. You want big bucks? Play big in March.

We have two players testing out this theory in this year’s tournament. Northern Iowa’s Ali Farokhmanesh has done his best to earn some big dollars with two big shots to keep the Panthers alive against UNLV and Kansas. He would have been a second-round pick at best if he had declared for the draft this year. Now? Your guess is as good as mine, but I wouldn’t be surprised if some team made him a first-round pick, earning him that three-year guaranteed contract. On the flip side, Villanova’s Scottie Reynolds, long projected as a high draft pick this summer, scored just 8 points on 2-11 shooting in their loss to tenth-seeded St. Mary’s. He’ll probably still go in the first round, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he drops at least five to ten spots. Five spots costs him $1 million per year. Ten spots could cost him double that amount.

The moral of the story? Even though none of the players in the tournament are being paid, there’s an awful lot of money being made and lost. Just ask Stephen Curry or Roy Hibbert.