2024-25 College Basketball Thread

Nowadays, for quality audio, all you really need is a decent microphone or headset, and a quiet location to record. The campus of Green Bay would almost certainly have an area that qualifies, but a home studio would be fine as well.

 

I wondered whatever happened to the Great Alaska Shootout. I do think there is great value in the MTEs. Playing in an eight team tournament where you have quick turnaround times against an opponent you don't have much time to prepare for gets teams ready for the NCAA tourney. I do also appreciate that the top teams tend to play other top teams early in the year. I wish college football would adopt the model and not have their schedules planned out for five years into the future.

 

Same crunch that has effected scheduling in general - There's no incentive for teams in the bigger and better conferences to schedule aggressively OOC, because their conference slate is so large and make-or-break anyway. If you can make the NCAA tournament going 11-9 in the Big East or the ACC or SEC or whatever, then you might as well schedule cupcakes for 9 of your 12 remaining games, then maybe 1 non-D1 game and 2 decent games at neutral site tournament. If you want to break this up somewhat, you can more heavily emphasize non-conference games, which also might discourage these mega conferences, but I think the horse has left the barn for that issue decades ago at this point.

 

I agree with your overall point that it's the expanded conference schedules that are having the biggest effect on early season scheduling, but I also want to point out that Seton Hall at 13-7 and St. John's at 11-9 in Big East play last year still got left out of the tournament.

Tangentially related: I really enjoyed the Gavitt Tipoff Games/Big East-Big Ten Challenge and the Big East-Big XII Battle in recent years, but those kinds of conference series seem to be going away and I assume their loss is also a byproduct of the expanded conference schedules. I believe the still relatively new ACC-SEC Challenge is the only one involving major conference teams that still on the schedule next season.

 

I think there is value in the feast week tournaments and would miss them if they disappear. But I did not realize teams were coming out of pocket to make those trips.

If the top MTEs couldn’t see this was unsustainable then I don’t have much pity for them. Even the Weedwacker Bowl will pay appearance fees to whatever 6-6 dregs are left for the taking.

 

College sports: "Let's take something that people actually enjoy and ditch it in the name of 'progress' and money." Lather, rinse, repeat; always repeat.

 

How long before the NCAA sued specifically over the issue of direct compensation to players for participating in the NCAA Tournament?
It’s never enough.

 

What really do college sports do for a college? Seriously it’s just advertising. Let’s not pretend that Jameis Winston had any interest in a degree at Florida State or that Johnny Manziel had any interest in an A&M degree.

 

Advertising is valuable. It works. Do you think the university as a whole gains nothing from athletic success?

 

Oh I know the university gains, that’s why I have always railed against the “scholar-athlete” BS and laugh at the hand wringing over paying athletes because it “tarnishes” the sport. That’s exactly what I’m talking about; colleges benefiting and athletes? Not so much, until NIL and even now the feeling is NIL is the problem. Hypocrisy at its finest.

 

URI improves to 9-0 with a home win against Providence, 69-63. In another sign of modern hoops, it was the first true away game for Providence (now 6-4), and URI has played seven home games and two neutral court games.