When Kansas, Ohio State, Louisville and Kentucky made up the 2012 Final Four, all seemed right, but that could have hurt the NCAA Men's tournament, according to a Brigham Young University (BYU) study.

Scott Grimshaw, a BYU statistics professor, found that more viewers watch the NCAA Tournament when a team like Florida Gulf Coast University makes a run. When all one, two and three seeded teams are in the Final Four, viewers are content, but not excited.

A "Cinderella" team, as underdogs are referred to, will have a 35 percent larger TV audience than a matchup between two national powerhouses, Grimshaw's study, published in the Journal of Quantitative Analysis in Sports, said. That accounts for three million additional views and 4.5 for the championship game.

"The Cinderella teams, with all the national media attention they get, become a national star," Grimshaw said. "It's not that these schools have an established national fan base, it's that the NCAA tournament celebrates the Cinderella more so than other sports."

When two Cinderella teams meet, all bets are off. When Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) met Butler University in the 2011 semifinals, 11 million viewers tuned in.

"Our research can't answer definitively why Cinderella's are more popular for fans, though it does prove they are," said co-author Paul Sabin, a BYU student. "By the time the tournament reaches the Final Four, most fans' local teams have been eliminated. It's plausible that interest for casual fans decreases as a result, but that Cinderella's provide them the motivation to tune in and root for the little guy."

Grimshaw estimated with his model that a championship game of two Cinderella teams would an 81 percent larger audience. The VCU-Butler game would have also only had about 6.4 million viewers either team was highly ranked.

The study took results from ten years of Nielsen TV ratings in 56 different major markets and found college basketball completely defies conventional wisdom. Previous studies have shown in the NFL and pro European soccer that large market teams, recognizable players and close games make money and attract viewers. However, when a team like George Mason or Witchita State knocks off a top-five ranked school and reach the Final Four, viewers poor in.

"Our paper was myth-busting to a certain degree because two of those three assumptions are wrong in college basketball," said Grimshaw. "The top ten teams in terms of national importance had no national effect on TV ratings, though they all had a strong local following."