Pride -- not cash -- will be Quakers' payoff

All those fans who have had dreams of big bucks dancing in their heads ever since the Quakers entered March Madness are in for a rude awakening. Contrary to popular belief, the University will not receive large sums of money as a reward for securing a spot in the NCAA men's basketball tournament. In fact, the Red and the Blue will see no green. According to Keith Martin, the NCAA's director of accounting, a portion of the money that the NCAA receives from CBS for the television rights to the tournament is given to the conferences that participate, but not to the individual universities. Each conference can decide how to allocate its portion of the money. This year, the Ivy League will receive $252,000. The formula for figuring out the size of each conference's payoff is rather complex. Martin said the amount of money given to each participating conference in any given year is determined by looking at that conference's participation in the tournament over the six previous years. For every tournament game that a conference's team wins, the NCAA writes a larger check to that conference the following year. But the University, home of this year's Ivy League champions, will not receive any more or less of this money than in past years when the Princeton University Tigers went to the tournament. According to Jeffrey Orleans, executive director of the council of Ivy Group presidents, the Ivy League's money is divided equally among the eight schools, but each school's share will be used to offset the operating costs of the league's central office. Orleans said that even if the Quakers make it to the later rounds of the tournament, any amount above $252,000 would go to the Ivy League and be divided evenly among all of the schools as well. The last time an Ivy League team reached the second round of the tournament was in 1984, when Princeton scored a first-round victory.