NCAA approves plan to pay women’s basketball tournament teams

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For six of the past seven seasons, the Florida Gulf Coast women’s basketball team punched its ticket to the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament.

Now, after a landmark unanimous decision by the NCAA, women’s basketball teams will get paid for making the tournament.

“It’s just a validation of what we’ve known for a long time that women’s basketball has tremendous value in this country at the collegiate level,” Atlantic Sun Conference commissioner Jeff Bacon said.

He added, “we’re a part of history right now. We’re witnessing a part of history.”

Bacon was a part of that historic vote at the NCAA convention in Nashville.

“There was a round of applause at the end if that tells you anything,” Bacon said. “That doesn’t happen very often.”

Starting this year, a total of $15 million will be awarded to tournament teams. Each conference that gets an automatic bid for the NCAA Tournament will receive a unit of payment. The initial rough estimate for the ASUN is about $100,000.

The conference will be awarded additional units for teams that get an at-large bid. For each win a team secures, an additional unit goes for their conference. Then, the conference will decide how that revenue is distributed.

“The fund is going to grow over a three year period of time to where we’re trying to get it to be,” Bacon explained. “It’ll continue to grow after that at a rate consistent to other NCAA funds.”

This model has been used for the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament for years. This vote comes as the sport’s popularity continues to rise.

Bacon told WINK News, “you’re already seeing a league with a premier program in it in Florida Gulf Coast and that’s helping others level up their investment and their competitiveness. And now we have this opportunity to reap some benefits of that, it’s going to be a great conversation. It’s probably great timing for us you know where you have programs that on their way up.”

Bacon said the conference will discuss how to utilize these funds.

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