Fix College Basketball

Nice article by Mark Adams about the slanted playing field in Men's NCAA hoops. As a non-Power Five fan I am long familiar with most of this, but the budget numbers and the percentages of home/neutral site games vs. true road games in OOC create a huge advantage. Smaller schools take the money to play away because their budget needs it to survive and so they play straw man for Enormous State to mow down, only to hear some asshat like Jay Bilas intone that their OOC schedule "does not meet the eye test" come Selection Sunday. Even the "neutral site" games (which count more for the Tournament committee) tend to be on the order of playing Kansas in Kansas City instead of Lawrence.

This article is also an example of a pet peeve - light gray type on a white background is damn near unreadable. I've seen worse, but this is a good example. If you have any pull at work, fight it.

MARK ADAMS | It’s time to fix college basketball now, and here’s how | American Sports Network

 

I think he misses the mark on why a lot of people don't really get into college basketball. It's not that Kansas and Kentucky and Duke dominate. It's that Kansas and Kentucky and Duke dominate behind players no one has time to learn before they are onto the NBA. Lonzo Ball will be famous for about two weeks this spring, then he will be in and out of some control freak NBA coach's doghouse for a year or two before he finally re-emerges as someone sports fans give a rat's ass about.

 

And then when someone like Indiana actually has the sack to go play someone like Fort Wayne -- a pretty good team, mind you -- on the road and loses, they get endless shit for it. There's no upside for a major program to play the Monmouths of the world on the road. I commend anyone who does it. Louisville playing at Grand Canyon was great for college basketball.

 

Butler lost at Indiana State, too.

Indiana has two wins over teams in the top 10 this year, including Kanas on a neutral site. And yet they are stuck at No. 9 because of that Fort Wayne aberration.

 

Speaking of pet peeves, one of mine is applying the football term "Power Five" to college basketball because it doesn't fit. The Big East is definitely a power conference in hoops, and you can make a case for the Atlantic 10 and the AAC as well. (Hell, some years the SEC hardly qualifies.) Basically, if your league gets more than three bids.

 

No doubt. Pound for pound, the Big East has plainly been better on the court than conferences like the SEC and Pac 12 in recent years.

But the catch, I think, is that the term "Power Five" references financial/political strength as much as playing strength. And when it comes money and influence, the Power 5 Conferences still clearly rule over all, even if they are getting their asses kicked on the court by the Butler, Villanova and Xaviers.

And, somewhat related, I wish the NCAA tournament would go back to 64 teams. That expansion to 68 was nothing but a cynical ploy by the Power 5 conferences to squeeze a few more of their 7th or 8th place type teams in with undeserved at-large births. Sorry, but I do not want to see teams that couldn't even win half their conference games in the national title tournament. The regular season should count for more than that.

 

A long long long series of semi-solutions in search of problems.

I don't see mismatch OOC games as some big problem, and certainly not a recent big problem -- it's been going on for 50-60-70 years and more.

The biggest problems of college basketball are the one-and-dones along with the dissolution of high school basketball due to the rise of travel/club/ prep school teams.

Ideally the NBAPA would negotiate a working agreement with the owners which would provide a tiered structure for early entry: players could turn pro directly out of HS, play in the NBADL for a couple years if they weren't quite good enough to stick in the NBA yet, then go up to the NBA two years later.

In other words you (the player) would have three options on when to turn pro:

1) Immediately out of HS.

2) Age 20 or after sophomore year of college;

3) Age 22 or after graduation, just like the olden days.

It would be better at least in theory for some players because those players with no interest or aptitude for attending college classes could go directly to the NBADL and start making nominal pro money;

It would be better for the owners because the could grab the one or two LeBron level players every year ready for the NBA right out of high school while most of their players would be more polished and finished. There would be fewer early-entry busts and fewer blown contracts.

It would be better for college basketball because no more one-and-dones; players with no interest or desire to attend college classes would be off playing in the NBADL. In the meantime there would be only one specific window when an underclass player could turn pro -- after sophomore season. Your freshman phenoms would hang around at least two years.

Needless to say the NCAA would have to put in a provision that a player could enter the draft after sophomore season, and if they failed to make an NBA roster, they could then return to school and resume their eligibility.

 

This is a very good point. The last player who had any kind of national acclaim for three years of college was . . . I can't remember . . . Tyler Hansbrough? Reddick? Battier?

 

Just follow baseball's model. Sign out of high school, attend a JC, or college for three years. It seems to work fine.

And change the RPI to further devalue home-court/neutral court wins, and increase the value of true road wins. Those games at NBA arenas/Hawaii/Las Vegas/Bahamas before several hundred fans are almost unwatchable.

 

Except for the small detail that nobody gives a damn about college baseball.

 

Stop using (or, at least, over-relying on) RPI.

 

Another thing is that the Tournament has essentially cannibalized the regular season. The Tournament is so compelling that it's all anybody cares about. At the schools that really matter, making the Tournament is a foregone conclusion nine out of 10 years or more. And the other places ... well, who gives a shit about them? People want stakes when they watch a game. The vast majority of college basketball games have no real stakes to the casual observer.