College basketball, in an attempt to make more money has watered down the sport. One of the major reasons major league baseball will never get the ratings (or attention) that the NFL draws is because of the importance of regular season games. It's much of the same with college basketball.
Teams have a regular season, a pre-tournament tournament, then the actual college basketball tournament. A team with a pitiful record can actually get into the playoffs. Theoretically, a team can lose every regular season game and still win the championship. WHY??
I know the argument is that it makes the tournament more exciting because it gives more teams a chance. And that's a lot of fun. The problem I have with that is that the regular season is absolutely pointless. The seeding for the tournament is done by opinions, so having a great regular season is only important in that it can give someone a favorable opinion of you. How you can have a championship based partly on opinions is mind boggling. I feel like we're one step away from putting all the teams on an episode of “SportsNation” and determining the tournament games like that.
My solution to this problem is simple, albeit likely offensive to many college basketball fans. Eliminate the conference tournaments and base seeding on national regular season rankings.
By doing this, college basketball teams will take regular season games more seriously. It makes conference games much more important and exciting (since the winner of the conference will be based on these games). Also, by basing the tournament teams on national rankings, at least the opinion of the team is based on a national consensus rather than a room full of people that pick the best teams.
Give people a reason to watch the entire season, and you'll make the sport more exciting for the fans. And, you guys are in it for the fans, not the money right? Because if you aren't, than I guess that makes college basketball no different than the money hungry professionals...
-Gus Rafeedie
college athletes are just as money hungry you think they play college basktball without the hopes and anticipations of making the big bucks one day? i never bought into that argument that profesisonal sports are all about money as if college is not. of course it is!
ReplyDeleteHey Gus, nice perspective but ill give you 3 reasons why I have to disagree. 1. Your theory would knock out the Butlers, Gonzagas, and George Masons of college basketball. It's hard as is for a mid major team to schedule a major conference team, and a good one at that during the regular season because the majors are already beefing up their schedules going against each other. The tournament committee looks at strength of schedule for its automatic bids, and to ask Coach K, Tom Izzo, or Thad Matta to schedule South Dakota Tech, Eastern Montana, and Byzantine U all in the same year every year is like asking them if they would like to be anally raped...they're gonna say hell no. That's why Virginia Tech never gets in the tournament because they play those type teams which makes their record look sexy, but then they go below .500 in conference play and suck in the first round of their conference tournament. Due to the inability to schedule majority big time teams, conference tournaments have to happen so lesser known squads have a chance to make the tournament. 2. Taking out the conf. tournament eliminates teams who get hot at the right time. Some teams start out bad because of a key player being injured or waiting until their transfer deadline ends(a constant nowadays), and have to gain some cohesion, but then they start to look great near the end of the season and during the conf. tournaments. An example would be Syracuse in 2006 when they had Gerry McNamara, they had 11 losses but got hot in the Big East conf. tournament where he hit 2 game winners and was conf. tournament MVP..i think they ended up going to the Sweet 16. 3. To refer back to my first point, having those little teams in the tournament would get to showcase big time players. Nobody knew about Steph Curry until he went ham in the NCAA tournament for Davidson..now hes a beast for Golden State..The only time people heard about Jordan Crawford was when he dunked on LeBron in Akron, then Xavier got in the tournament by winning their conference tournament and he went ham last year in the tourney. Same could be said about Eric Maynor, who beat Duke in the tournament a few years ago at the buzzer for Virginia Commonwealth...now hes playing alongside Kevin Durant. An additional footnote about regular season games being boring..use them for homework when u do your brackets. It has helped for me as I've won numerous office pools and what not, and there are some interesting non-conf games such as the Jimmy V classic and the Maui Invitational..the one thing i would change that I agree with you on is taking the retarded AD's out of the selection committee process. Use sportswriters and analysts who know and follow the game best. To me college bball is the purest thing to determining a true national champion. Football should do this, but money is too big of a factor for them to change.
ReplyDeleteJerry,
ReplyDeleteYou make an excellent point about the scheduling of smaller teams. It could turn into a tournament of the large schools (Duke, Ohio State, etc) instead of a tournament for college basketball.
Perhaps a better answer from my article would have been to reduce the regular season by 4 or 5 games, or to eliminate the conference tournies but find a way to force the Duke's to play the Youngstown State's.
Either way, I would LOVE to see college football with a tourney. That would be the best of both worlds. Fewer, meaningful games and a tourney so everyone knows who the best really is.
-Gus