The Sweet Sixteen begins Thursday with a bracket that tells you more about the state of college basketball than any regular-season game could. Six of the sixteen remaining teams belong to the Big Ten. No conference has placed six teams this deep in the tournament in the modern era. The expanded Big Ten — now an 18-school behemoth stretching from New Jersey to Oregon — has become the dominant force in a sport that was supposed to be about regional identity. [1]

Thursday's slate is loaded. Purdue faces Texas in the early window. Nebraska plays Iowa in what will be the first all-Big Ten Sweet Sixteen matchup in tournament history. Arizona draws Arkansas. Illinois meets Houston. Four of the eight games involve Big Ten teams. The conference's presence is not incidental. It is the tournament's organizing fact. [2]

Iowa's path here is the week's best story. The Hawkeyes, a nine seed making their first Sweet Sixteen appearance since 1999, upset number-one Florida 73-72 on Sunday in one of the tournament's instant-classic finishes. Alvaro Folgueiras buried a corner three-pointer with 4.5 seconds remaining, sending the defending national champions home and becoming the first player most casual fans had never heard of to trend nationwide. Florida had led by 12 in the second half. Iowa came back possession by possession, the way teams do when they have nothing to lose and everything to prove.

The ratings reflect the drama. The NCAA reported that first-weekend viewership averaged 10.1 million across CBS and TNT, the highest figure on record. Americans who have been watching a war on their screens for four weeks turned to basketball with something approaching relief. An estimated $3.3 billion was wagered on first-weekend games, a number that makes the tournament as much a financial event as a sporting one.

What the Big Ten's dominance raises is a question the sport does not want to answer: whether conference realignment has made the tournament better or simply more predictable. When the richest conference places the most teams, that is not parity. It is consolidation — the same force reshaping media, technology, and American life generally, expressed through basketball brackets. The Big Ten's six teams did not get here by accident. They got here because the conference absorbed blue-blood programs from the Pac-12 and Big East, consolidating talent and television revenue in a way that smaller conferences cannot match.

Nebraska and Iowa tip off Thursday evening. One Big Ten team will advance. The conference has already won.

-- Amara Okonkwo, Lagos