Fix College Basketball

If we implemented the solution in the original post and mandated home-and-home games only, the bottom 10-15 conferences would be immediately shut out from ever playing the big boys.

 

That's not nice.

 

Just went through my cable options with the remote. As of this moment, there are seven different college basketball game. Even I chose one, that's six I'm not watching. Tough to build a mass audience like that.

 

Couldn't you say the same things about every sport? Plus it's really easy to watch more than one game on multiple screens these days.

And when Kansas plays Duke or Kentucky plays Louisville, there's where you build a mass audience.

 

Steph Curry.

 

With shitty games like this UNC-Kentucky contest I can see why people are down on college basketball.

 

Which precedes Kentucky v. Louisville on Wednesday.

 

So how would that be much different from only playing them when being paid to play to play lambs to the slaughter on the big school's home court? They've already jiggered the tournament so that the #7 teams from power conferences can get in, and they regularly match the smaller schools against each other in the first two rounds so that not too many have a chance to get through to the round of sixteen.

Look at Duke's schedule. Nineteen games at home, four neutral court games in tournaments, Elon in Greensboro, NC which looks like a true neutral court, UNLV in Vegas, and nine conference road games. 19 home games to ten road games. Duke is .889 at home under Coach K. There is an inherent advantage in being able to schedule that way. If the small school has a home record like that they won't see a home and home more than a handful of times, no way in hell.

I've always been a small school underdog kinda fan. I grew up in Atlanta as a Ga. Tech fan, because all the kids who I knew who were UGA fans were dicks about it and GT was the alternative. I also grew up hating Alabama and Notre Dame because they regularly stomped GT, and the Bama fans were even bigger dicks about it. Went to University of Houston and had to put up with UT and aTm fans, although I was around for Phi Slamma Jama and the Pardee Run 'n Shoot years. Back to Alabama, where I became a UAB fan over time, as my wife has worked there for 27 years and my kid went there. The 'Bama fans were even bigger dicks to UAB than GT, and the UA Board of Trustees deliberately knifed the program early and often. To be fair, there are some good Bama fans, and most of the actual graduates are, but the Walmart fans are horrible for the most part.

Somewhere along the line I could have taken the easy way out and became an Oklahoma, FSU, Ohio St, Michigan, USC fan or something, but just picking a winner to root for because that would be easy wasn't in me.


I've watched the smaller schools fight for decent scheduling and be all but unable to find it. If they have a good home record they have to go on the road and face a tough uphill fight if they want to get an OOC matchup. If they don't get it, or can't, or lose, then they "don't pass the eye test'. Fuck Jay Bilas, btw.

I understand that P5 is football, but that term gets used because the schools get P5 football dollars and leverage in their athletic departments, which directly effects hoops.

I guess my other small school pet peeve (and this is in a general sense) regards football. It is all but impossible for any team that is not in the preseason Top 25 to reach a big bowl. Basically their only chance is to be undefeated while having a P5 school or two on the schedule and winning those games away. Preseason Top 25 is bullshit. It's given out based on what a team did last season, in recruiting, and most of all on their reputation. This results in things like this year's Notre Dame team being ranked early. Enough guys at the top have to screw the pooch and drop or a smaller school's team will never get a sniff, no matter how good they are. It will never stop because it allows lots of articles and sells a lot of preseason magazines. I wish there were no rankings until after game three or something. Shrug.

I know I won't get any traction on this. Many of you guys went to big schools and don't have the same mindset, or you covered power schools to the point that you don't much value the lesser conferences, or can't understand why they even have fans when they could watch Enormous State U instead. Shrug. That's ok.

I'd flat love to see a cap on NCAA basketball spending at $6 or 7m though. It would help level things a bit.

 

My suggestion to improve college basketball is to eliminate team timeouts. Have timeouts for commercial breaks every four minutes but other than that let them play.

 

Screw you!

 

I'd be all for that. Suck it up for 4 minutes, buttercups.

 

Kentucky/North Carolina, Kentucky/Louisville, Butler/Indiana -- all great matchups and all just glorified exhibition games. They'll all be in the tournament come March. So why get overly excited about them now?

The irony is there are great players and great games to see on an almost nightly basis. Interesting stories everywhere. And yet they mean less because they're just playing for March seeding.