The glass slipper has shattered, Cinderellas no more?

The Athletic's Jordan Brenner posted some nice thoughts about whether or not the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament's Cinderellas are dead.

In the end, I think Jordan is feeding us what the NCAA would love for us to feel but I think it misses the main point.

We LOVE Cinderellas because they, as a small or mid-market institution of higher learning find magic in a bottle for 1-3 weeks of play during March/April. Just plucking them from those "Davids" and inserting them into "Goliath" isn't the same at all.

I'm loving seeing Iowa make it through the first weekend in 27 years, not because I went there, but because I have so many close friends and family who have. But without NIL allowing Head Coach Ben McCollum to pluck most of his stars from Drake and move them 114 miles East is unheard of in recent history. Cinderella is having them all at Drake and making the magic.

I do not begrudge NCAA athletes now having the opportunity to earn money that their Universities made off of them for half a century. But we cannot just say it's now lift and place and voila, Iowa is a Cinderella.  Iowa, loaded and strapped with all kinds of NIL cash, still far less than many other Universities, will NEVER be a Cinderella when it comes from a Big 5 conference. It's the antithesis of Cinderella in all of its forms.

VCU, George Mason, Butler (who beat VCU), Davidson with Steph Curry, 2025 McNeese, Florida Gulf Coast, Loyola Chicago (in 2018 AND 1963) and St. Peters.  The casual fan has never heard of some of these places but Bracket-Heads all over definitely have. These are the schools that, when matched up against a 1-5 seed, you love to watch them get all scrappy and bring their brand of hoops that got them there, to the national stage.

Cinderellas literally prove that scene from Hoosiers where the rim is still 10 feet high and the free throw line is 15 feet from the basket and it doesn't matter how much "space" there is above and around that 4700 square feet of floor, it's the same as it is in your practice facility. Perspective.

I do think the era of NIL is pushing Cinderellas to the side line. Their slippers never to be returned by their March Madness Prince and cut-pasting a mid-major into an SEC, Big18, ACC, Big XII conference team will NOT suffice.