A crowd of 20,000 fans watched history on Friday night, when the previously unknown Saint Peter’s Peacocks continued their fairy tale as the face of March Madness with an improbable win over Purdue in the Sweet 16.
Ninety miles away, students at the small school hidden in Jersey City celebrated their team becoming the first 15 seed to ever reach the Elite Eight.
That recently-renovated arena, named Run Baby Run Arena to honor the last memorable Saint Peter’s team from back in 1968, holds 3,200 fans. That could fit the entire student body, as the enrollment at Saint Peter’s is roughly 3,000.
That’s right. The crowd in Philadelphia that celebrated the darlings of the MAAC, the little-engine-that-could squad from Jersey that toppled another household name in college basketball, was nearly seven times the size of Saint Peter’s entire student population.
All of the other numbers that try, yet still somehow fail, to quantify how improbable the Peacocks run is, are ones you’ve likely heard by now. The powerhouse Kentucky that Saint Peter’s stunned in overtime in the first round? They pay head coach John Calipari $8 million per year, more than Saint Peter’s entire athletic budget in 2020 ($7.2 million). The Wildcats’ top assistant makes over three times as much as Peacocks head coach Shaheen Holloway’s reported salary. Saint Peter’s operating expenses just three years ago were half that compared to its competitor for the biggest upset in tournament history in UMBC, which shocked No. 1 Virginia in 2018.
But you know the financial and numerical obstacles that Saint Peter’s has had to overcome by now. But what about the financial and numerical gains that the program, and school as a whole, could be in for whenever this magical run ends? That is a far more interesting look.
By beating Purdue on Friday night, Saint Peter’s earned another unit in the NCAA’s Basketball Fund, which distributes money to a conference any time one of its teams wins an NCAA Tournament game (until the championship). The multi-billion dollar fund comes from the NCAA’s media and broadcasting profits from March Madness, and as of last year, each unit was worth just over $337,000. Each time a team picks up a unit, its conference earns that payment each year for the next six following years, meaning over a six-year span, one unit earned in March Madness paid that conference just over $2 million last year.
For a conference like the mid-major MAAC, where St. Peter’s presides, they will almost always have just one team in the tournament, its league champion. Rarely do they every earn more than two units, regularly failing to get past the First Four or the first round (for context, prior to Saint Peter’s, a MAAC school hadn’t won an NCAA Tournament game in eight years). But by winning three games already in this tournament, the Peacocks have already picked up four units (one for each win and one for qualifying), meaning, if we went by last year’s payouts, they have already earned the MAAC over $8 million over the next six years for the conference to do with it as it pleases. If distributed evenly among the 11 MAAC teams, that would net each member nearly $750,000 for Saint Peter’s accomplishments, possibly more if the Peacocks continue to shock the world with a win over North Carolina on Sunday.
That wouldn’t sound like much at all for a program like the Tar Heels, but for the Peacocks, that payout to their school alone over six years is roughly four times the amount of the school’s operating expenses for the men’s basketball team just three seasons ago. Simply put, St. Peter’s is on the type of run that could change the state of their program forever.
"Everyone is rooting for Saint Peter’s because when we win, everyone wins!” athletic director Rachelle Paul told The Buffalo News. “You can’t put a value or a number, though, on the exposure the university is getting, nationally or globally."
We’ve seen March Madness runs greatly impact small-time schools before. When Florida Gulf Coast improbably reached the Sweet 16 as a 15 seed in 2013, their school saw a staggering surge in freshman applications, over 35 percent more than the year before.
“Our visibility in basketball certainly didn’t hurt,” FGCU president Wilson Bradshaw said at the time. “We have to acknowledge that.”
Seven years before FGCU’s run, mid-major George Mason made a remarklable run to the Final Four as an 11 seed, and the school raked in the benefits. Per the school’s website, the program received nearly $700 million in free advertising as a result of that run, and the school website saw an increase in traffic of more than 800 percent. Its school bookstore brought in just under $1 million in sales in 10 days leading up to their Final Four game, an unthinkable number compared to the $11,000 it averaged per week before that tournament. Admissions inquiries also went up by 350 percent, with more students wanting to attend the Cinderella school after learning that it even existed just a short while before.
Those are the benefits that will be coming to Jersey City thanks to the Peacocks, a far smaller and lesser-known school than any of those previous Cinderellas ever were. Perhaps the days of leaky ceilings in the coaches office and sharing visiting locker rooms with swimmers from the nearby campus pool are over. Perhaps the tournament shares and the skyrocketing publicity give Saint Peter’s a similar spike in admissions, leading to more tuition money and more resources for the program. For a school that averaged 526 fans in their 13 home games this past season (imagine the spike in revenue next year when people flock to see March Madness’ greatest Cinderella), this magical run is truly life-changing.
Sure, there will be challenges that come along as well. Holloway will draw massive interest from bigger schools, including his alma mater at nearby Seton Hall. The same happened to Jim Larranaga at George Mason, moving on to Miami and the ACC not long after that Final Four run. But that’s a worry for a different day. For now, the Peacocks are still alive, and the school’s fortunes are turning with each passing win, each t-shirt sold, each Peacock logo placed on a billboard.
Follow Ryan Chichester on Twitter: @ryanchichester1
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