(08-08-2017 07:57 PM)RutgersGuy Wrote:  Thats because it's college football. Only an idiot couldn't make money off of it.

I also love hearing an Alabama fan say that college basketball regular season is boring. I will take an educated guess that you don't follow that sport all that close do you?

Ya know, if you don't agree with something I said then you can just express that. You don't have to be an ass. It's called tact.

Anyway, I actually follow college basketball fairly closely. I watch all my team's games and basically whatever the national games are that ESPN and FOX are showing. Problem is that I'm in the minority. Whether I'm a Bama fan or not has nothing to do with it. If you don't believe me then look up the TV ratings for college basketball. They aren't impressive.

That and one of the primary reasons the college football postseason makes so much cash is because the NCAA has no control whatsoever over it. The NFL makes more money than the NBA because people like football more than basketball, but the NBA still brings down a boatload of cash. By contrast, college football doesn't just make more than college basketball. The difference is embarrassing and so conference realignment is driven almost solely by football revenue because that's where the cash is. Remove the NCAA from the equation and basketball's numbers will improve. Everybody will be better off from a lot of different angles.

(08-08-2017 10:00 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  The NFL makes more money than the NBA because people like football more than basketball, but the NBA still brings down a boatload of cash.

The NBA does very well with casual fans while for CBB casual fans only care about March Madness. It wasn't always that way. I think that when the NBA soared in popularity among casual fans, starting when Magic and Bird joined the NBA, they siphoned a lot of fans away from CBB. Honestly I don't know if CBB can recapture those casual fans no matter what they do. The NBA has more offense, more scoring, more activity compared to CBB. CBB has too many control-freak coaches telling their team to run the first 20 seconds off of every shot clock before even thinking of starting the offense, coaches whose teams "play physical" instead of playing legit defense, and officials who sometimes blow their whistles every 10 seconds and start a free throw parade.

College football, in contrast, resembles the NFL game more closely. Imagine if CFB was dominated by too-conservative coaching and officials who disrupt the flow of the game too much, and scoring only half as many points on average as in an NFL game.

(08-09-2017 02:47 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(08-08-2017 10:00 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  The NFL makes more money than the NBA because people like football more than basketball, but the NBA still brings down a boatload of cash.

The NBA does very well with casual fans while for CBB casual fans only care about March Madness. It wasn't always that way. I think that when the NBA soared in popularity among casual fans, starting when Magic and Bird joined the NBA, they siphoned a lot of fans away from CBB. Honestly I don't know if CBB can recapture those casual fans no matter what they do. The NBA has more offense, more scoring, more activity compared to CBB. CBB has too many control-freak coaches telling their team to run the first 20 seconds off of every shot clock before even thinking of starting the offense, coaches whose teams "play physical" instead of playing legit defense, and officials who sometimes blow their whistles every 10 seconds and start a free throw parade.

College football, in contrast, resembles the NFL game more closely. Imagine if CFB was dominated by too-conservative coaching and officials who disrupt the flow of the game too much, and scoring only half as many points on average as in an NFL game.

I certainly don't have any numbers (TV ratings, etc...) to back it up, but my perception is that the NBA regular season doesn't do very well with casual fans either. With 50% of the league making the playoffs it isn't uncommon for sub .500 teams to end up in the playoffs...talk about the definition of a meaningless regular season.

Certainly with any sport it varies city to city and region to region but having lived most recently in Milwaukee and now in Minneapolis I can say that from my experience the casual fandom of either of those franchises is minimal. I'm sure it is different in the Bay Area or Cleveland where you currently have winning teams.

Milkwaukee getting new arena, and in Mpls the Target Center is undergoing massive renovation making it comparable to a new arena (in terms of new scoreboard, new seats, and, most "importantly", new club levels).

I really feel like any NBA market could "catch fire" in terms of attendance and tshirt fans, if the franchise happens to win the lottery like Golden State did. Yeah the Bay Area is a huge population ... but don't think anyone really cared about the Warriors for a long time, before the revival. Also a lot of tech people there who aren't necessarily concerned with sports. Anyway ...

(08-09-2017 09:56 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  Milkwaukee getting new arena, and in Mpls the Target Center is undergoing massive renovation making it comparable to a new arena (in terms of new scoreboard, new seats, and, most "importantly", new club levels).

I really feel like any NBA market could "catch fire" in terms of attendance and tshirt fans, if the franchise happens to win the lottery like Golden State did. Yeah the Bay Area is a huge population ... but don't think anyone really cared about the Warriors for a long time, before the revival. Also a lot of tech people there who aren't necessarily concerned with sports. Anyway ...

Definitely much needed projects for both cities, was in Milwaukee a couple weeks ago and the new Bucks arena is going to be top notch. Good for the Bucks, Marquette basketball, and for the city of Milwaukee to be able to continue to attract NCAA events like the NCAA tournament and the NCAA Frozen Four.

Looking forward to the new Target center as well, with it's renovation downtown Minneapolis will have three world class sports facilities in Target Field, Target Center, and US Bank Stadium.

(08-09-2017 08:05 AM)tcufrog86 Wrote:  

(08-09-2017 02:47 AM)Wedge Wrote:  

(08-08-2017 10:00 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  The NFL makes more money than the NBA because people like football more than basketball, but the NBA still brings down a boatload of cash.

The NBA does very well with casual fans while for CBB casual fans only care about March Madness. It wasn't always that way. I think that when the NBA soared in popularity among casual fans, starting when Magic and Bird joined the NBA, they siphoned a lot of fans away from CBB. Honestly I don't know if CBB can recapture those casual fans no matter what they do. The NBA has more offense, more scoring, more activity compared to CBB. CBB has too many control-freak coaches telling their team to run the first 20 seconds off of every shot clock before even thinking of starting the offense, coaches whose teams "play physical" instead of playing legit defense, and officials who sometimes blow their whistles every 10 seconds and start a free throw parade.

College football, in contrast, resembles the NFL game more closely. Imagine if CFB was dominated by too-conservative coaching and officials who disrupt the flow of the game too much, and scoring only half as many points on average as in an NFL game.

I certainly don't have any numbers (TV ratings, etc...) to back it up, but my perception is that the NBA regular season doesn't do very well with casual fans either. With 50% of the league making the playoffs it isn't uncommon for sub .500 teams to end up in the playoffs...talk about the definition of a meaningless regular season.

Certainly with any sport it varies city to city and region to region but having lived most recently in Milwaukee and now in Minneapolis I can say that from my experience the casual fandom of either of those franchises is minimal. I'm sure it is different in the Bay Area or Cleveland where you currently have winning teams.

No doubt that's true -- Warriors' local interest is way above what it was back when the team sucked. No surprise there.

The NBA's regular-season ratings on ESPN and TNT are good because it's based on fans following the most prominent teams and not just their local teams. The most-watched CBB regular-season games are on par with NBA regular-season games but the floor for CBB TV ratings is lower. (Just as a guess, that's one reason ESPN and Turner paid so much for the NBA. Obviously the playoffs are the biggest reason but it's also attractive to the networks that an NBA telecast has a high floor relative to other programming they might show in those time slots.)

(08-09-2017 09:56 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  Milkwaukee getting new arena, and in Mpls the Target Center is undergoing massive renovation making it comparable to a new arena (in terms of new scoreboard, new seats, and, most "importantly", new club levels).

I really feel like any NBA market could "catch fire" in terms of attendance and tshirt fans, if the franchise happens to win the lottery like Golden State did. Yeah the Bay Area is a huge population ... but don't think anyone really cared about the Warriors for a long time, before the revival. Also a lot of tech people there who aren't necessarily concerned with sports. Anyway ...

The Warriors attendance has always been strong, despite being a loser franchise for so long. Had there been a team across the Bay like in baseball and football, then it's fair to speculate the Warriors would be gone.

OK, fair enough.

Still think their recent success has led to a lot more tshirt fans. Even in friggin' Mpls, I see people casually wearing GSW stuff! Granted, our NBA team sucks.

I would support this move simply because it removes the last remaining source of revenue from the bureaucratic money wasting radically far lefties that populate the rank and file of the NCAA. The NCAA is an institution which I can say, without hesitation, that I would enjoy dancing upon the grave of.

(08-09-2017 01:45 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  I would support this move simply because it removes the last remaining source of revenue from the bureaucratic money wasting radically far lefties that populate the rank and file of the NCAA. The NCAA is an institution which I can say, without hesitation, that I would enjoy dancing upon the grave of.

Well it would probably be a line dance. Otherwise you'll have to push me off the plot because I'll have some dancing to do too and I bet we aren't the only ones!

Can we also burn the HQ down and dance in its ashes?

We could have a heck of a BBQ that way!

(08-09-2017 01:45 PM)georgia_tech_swagger Wrote:  I would support this move simply because it removes the last remaining source of revenue from the bureaucratic money wasting radically far lefties that populate the rank and file of the NCAA. The NCAA is an institution which I can say, without hesitation, that I would enjoy dancing upon the grave of.

Meh ... take away the NCAA and you'd converge back to essentially what we have now. Conference still rule the world. There would be organizations and associations to take the outputs of conferences (their champs/top teams) into a tournament and/or post-season structure of some kind. For example, the CFP has nothing to do with the NCAA. March Madness would go on, exactly as is, just without the NCAA, instead run by some organization. Confs would pool resources to create some kind of organization that polices recruiting, academics, etc. And so on

(08-09-2017 01:10 PM)MplsBison Wrote:  OK, fair enough.

Still think their recent success has led to a lot more tshirt fans. Even in friggin' Mpls, I see people casually wearing GSW stuff! Granted, our NBA team sucks.

Naturally, they've gained fans. But if anything, it has intensified a lot of long time casual fans and gained them lots of national t-shirt fans. But they often had some of the best attendance in the NBA.

(08-08-2017 01:17 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(08-08-2017 11:45 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  There is nothing like the first weekend of March Madness .... and that's precisely because everyone holds their breath and crosses their fingers for upsets and the ability to predict upsets.

Simple as that. After that, it quickly boils down to a defacto MBB power conf tournament to determine the national champion (with a couple exceptions).

No idea, why on earth, you'd want to screw around with that ....

...yet it was better when there were only 64 teams.

I don't know how (or why, or if) it was better with 64 teams. The biggest problem, IMO, with the tournament is that one third of the participants don't really belong in it. They are included just so we can say every conference (and, thus, every school) has a chance to compete for the national championship.

I think that problem could be solved without adding to the length of the tournament by expanding to 80 teams, with the top 48 seeds getting a first round bye. The other 32 play the first round on Tuesday and Wednesday at one of the sub-regional sites, with the 16 winners advancing to the Thursday-Friday round at the same site.

Now, if form holds, the #1 overall seed is playing the #64 overall seed for its first game, instead of a team that could be ranked #200 or higher in the current system. The top 16 seeds will still be heavy favorites, but upsets will be much more frequent.

I think that's a strong idea, ken.

Only thing is that I don't know if TV execs will balk at the idea of truly starting March Madness on Tues/Wed, instead of Thur/Fri. I know that the Dayton games start early, but that's not really considered March Madness for real. People start the weekend early on Thurs ... but pushing that to Tues might be asking too much, especially if its no big name programs included.

At the least, they'll want to make sure that the Tues/Wed games include a lot of G5/DI-AAA vs P5 type matchups, which will still be considered "upsets" and which is what makes for the main interest and TV watching in the first week/weekend. But if that first Tues/Wed was a bunch of Atlantic Sun champ vs Big Sky champ type of games .... I think TV and casual fans would take a pass until the "real" March Madness begins on Thurs/Fri.

(08-10-2017 10:24 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  I think that's a strong idea, ken.

Only thing is that I don't know if TV execs will balk at the idea of truly starting March Madness on Tues/Wed, instead of Thur/Fri. I know that the Dayton games start early, but that's not really considered March Madness for real. People start the weekend early on Thurs ... but pushing that to Tues might be asking too much, especially if its no big name programs included.

At the least, they'll want to make sure that the Tues/Wed games include a lot of G5/DI-AAA vs P5 type matchups, which will still be considered "upsets" and which is what makes for the main interest and TV watching in the first week/weekend. But if that first Tues/Wed was a bunch of Atlantic Sun champ vs Big Sky champ type of games .... I think TV and casual fans would take a pass until the "real" March Madness begins on Thurs/Fri.

I created a hypothetical 80 team field for last season by taking a composite ranking using the Massey, Sagarin and KenPom ratings for each team. Including the champion of each conference resulted in every team among the top 63 making the field.

Of the 16 first round games, 9 would include a team from either a P5 conference or the Big East. These were (in order of strongest to weakest): Clemson, Seton Hall, Syracuse, Utah, California, Providence, Alabama, Georgia and Illinois. Houston from the AAC was also in this group. So 10 out of 16 isn't too bad.

Nine teams from outside the 6 power conferences would have earned first round byes. They are (seed in parentheses): Gonzaga, WCC (1); Wichita St, MVC (3); SMU, AAC (4); St Mary's, WCC (5); Cincinnati, AAC (6), Rhode Island, A-10 (9); Dayton, A-10 (10); Middle Tennessee, USA (11); and VCU, A-10 (12).

There would still be a few games that wouldn't include name teams, but neither would there be the mismatches we now see. Those first round games likely wouldn't be on the major channels, but some fans will want to watch them.

I could also see considering first round losers for a spot in the NIT field, possibly as hosts since they would have already traveled once or twice in the postseason.

(08-10-2017 09:48 AM)ken d Wrote:  

(08-08-2017 01:17 PM)Hokie Mark Wrote:  

(08-08-2017 11:45 AM)MplsBison Wrote:  There is nothing like the first weekend of March Madness .... and that's precisely because everyone holds their breath and crosses their fingers for upsets and the ability to predict upsets.

Simple as that. After that, it quickly boils down to a defacto MBB power conf tournament to determine the national champion (with a couple exceptions).

No idea, why on earth, you'd want to screw around with that ....

...yet it was better when there were only 64 teams.

I don't know how (or why, or if) it was better with 64 teams. The biggest problem, IMO, with the tournament is that one third of the participants don't really belong in it. They are included just so we can say every conference (and, thus, every school) has a chance to compete for the national championship.

I think that problem could be solved without adding to the length of the tournament by expanding to 80 teams, with the top 48 seeds getting a first round bye. The other 32 play the first round on Tuesday and Wednesday at one of the sub-regional sites, with the 16 winners advancing to the Thursday-Friday round at the same site.

Now, if form holds, the #1 overall seed is playing the #64 overall seed for its first game, instead of a team that could be ranked #200 or higher in the current system. The top 16 seeds will still be heavy favorites, but upsets will be much more frequent.

An interesting concept that would still draw the larger audience (which is why we have 64-68 now). It might well help the tournament's drama. I guess we call the winners of that first round the "Least 16"?

One of the things I was striving for was a way to take out of the selection committee's hands decisions about who makes the field. They would still be needed to handle the logistical chore of which bracket each team goes to by taking into account geography and travel considerations, especially for the 16 sub-regional sites (which would now include five teams each instead of four).

I wouldn't want them to be able to move any team more than one line up or down to accommodate travel.

Using a composite of three major (and respected) ratings would take a lot of controversy out of the selection and seeding process, IMO.

(08-10-2017 11:51 AM)ken d Wrote:  I created a hypothetical 80 team field for last season by taking a composite ranking using the Massey, Sagarin and KenPom ratings for each team. Including the champion of each conference resulted in every team among the top 63 making the field.

Of the 16 first round games, 9 would include a team from either a P5 conference or the Big East. These were (in order of strongest to weakest): Clemson, Seton Hall, Syracuse, Utah, California, Providence, Alabama, Georgia and Illinois. Houston from the AAC was also in this group. So 10 out of 16 isn't too bad.

Nine teams from outside the 6 power conferences would have earned first round byes. They are (seed in parentheses): Gonzaga, WCC (1); Wichita St, MVC (3); SMU, AAC (4); St Mary's, WCC (5); Cincinnati, AAC (6), Rhode Island, A-10 (9); Dayton, A-10 (10); Middle Tennessee, USA (11); and VCU, A-10 (12).

There would still be a few games that wouldn't include name teams, but neither would there be the mismatches we now see. Those first round games likely wouldn't be on the major channels, but some fans will want to watch them.

I could also see considering first round losers for a spot in the NIT field, possibly as hosts since they would have already traveled once or twice in the postseason.

OK, thanks for the additional info.

So 8 games each on Tues and Wed evenings (for TV). If you split it just among the three cable channels, that would be two games on one and three each on the other. Think it could work. Or perhaps even the marquee game of each day on CBS.

The Power 5 and if you add the Big East, the Major 6, already got 32 of the 36 at-large bids and 13 more teams in the NIT. That is 51 of 75 (Auburn pulled their name from consideration too). Pretty much all the rest of the schools had poor seasons. They are getting all the exposure and revenue they could ask for. For all intents and purposes they have what they want, and have thrown the minimum bones to the non-major schools.

Mid-Majors get 4 at-large (WCC, A-10, AAC, and usually MWC compete for those, an insurance policy to make sure ranked teams get in), and 19 NIT bids (10 went to AQ for those 1st place teams who didn't win their mid-major tourney). That appeases them enough.

TV is set up so NIT dominates Tuesdays and Wednesdays (22 of 31 games), which don't really compete with the NCAA -except the first 4-, nor those that fell of Monday (4 of the 8 2nd round), nor the Championship game on Thursday Night. The exposure is maximized for the Major 6.

The NCAA tournament, many complained the best of the Mid-Major schools were forced to play-in or play against each other in the first round effectively eliminating most of them, which was true. The set-up pretty much guarantees the Major 6 will have 13 to 15 of the final 16 schools. The entire set-up benefits the Major conferences and maximizes revenues.

The evidence is overwhelming that the Major 6 ALREADY run the NCAA and NIT tournaments. They have nothing to gain.