They say the NCAA Tournament is the best thing going in sports. I can be sympathetic to that idea to some degree, but the NCAA is fleecing the schools.

I would also argue that the value of college basketball is being suppressed by the interference of the NCAA. They don't care, of course, because this is the only way they'll get paid. In short, the rest of us are being put on the back burner.

Let me propose a few alternatives that I think might actually make life better for everyone that isn't based in Indianapolis.

1. The postseason should be controlled by the conferences, not the NCAA.

This is crucial because the value of the college basketball regular season is very low, but the current deal for the NCAA Tournament brings in $1 billion annually in TV revenue. That's not counting ticket sales and other rights. I've heard the figure is roughly $2.2 billion annually.

That's a lot of money...duh. Biggest problem is a lot of it is being siphoned off to the NCAA. I'll go ahead and assume another fair chunk of it is being used to pay for neutral site arenas and other amenities that aren't necessary.

I know this won't be popular with the Mid-Majors, but most of the audience that watches these games are either fans of the Power schools(not just P5) or just people that love betting. Excluding the entrance of most Mid-Major conferences is a reasonable position because they aren't really generating the money.

I would start by knocking the number of entrants down to 32 and playing the first 3 rounds in home arenas of the higher seeds. The Final Four could be at a neutral site where it can garner more significant ticket sales and be accompanied by more of a spectacle. That makes sense, but using a neutral site for every game does not. It's expensive and it increases travel costs.

2. Alter how teams makes the postseason.

This is somewhat like 1A, but this is also crucial because it makes the regular season much more valuable.

As it stands, you play your schedule and then you play your conference tournament. Then you hope your resume is good enough according to the committee's standards to make the big dance. The Tournament itself is great, but it's awfully boring getting there.

I've proposed some ideas on how to alter the regular season in the past, but most of my thoughts were probably not realistic. I think what I'm about to say is though.

First, scrap the preseason tournaments and cap the number of games at 30. A conference can utilize as few or as many of those games as they wish during the regular season, but a school cannot play more than 30 games that will actually impact their national rankings.

The conference season should then be played as a means to trim down participants for the respective conference tournaments. I would say conference tournaments need to consist of no more than 8 teams if that many. This little feature makes the conference season a little more valuable as it actually has real impact on whether or not you enter much less win the conference tournament.

Secondly, the rule should be that entrance into the national title tournament should be dependent upon how you finish in your conference. Instead of allowing teams to be selected at large, the teams should be selected to fill spots based on where they are in the standings. If you win your conference tournament then you finished first you get a higher seed in the national tournament. If you are the runner-up then you get into the next pot. So on and so forth until 32 spots are filled. The higher you finish in your conference, the higher seed you will get and the more likely you are to host a home game in the postseason.

In other words, some conferences won't get 8 while some conferences only get 2. Each league will get an equal number...or at least we'll figure the math out as soon as we figure out how many leagues are in this association. The money should be split equally among all schools rather than giving teams credits.

3. What about everyone else in D1?

Some of you will be familiar with this concept, but you non-soccer fans out there may be new to this. Are you familiar with the concept of a domestic cup tournament.

In England, they call it the FA Cup. The Football Association allows all its members to compete in one tournament throughout the year. It's single elimination and literally everyone gets in.

You heard me...everyone gets in. There are currently 351 D1 teams. What if we had a tournament that featured all of them? Call it the Division 1 Cup if you will.

What I'm talking about would be a separate tournament to the national title tournament at the end of the season. This event would take place all year long and would be in addition to the 30 games everyone is allowed to play.

Right before the regular season starts, we seed our 351(an ever-growing number by the way) schools and create one bracket. That means we'd have a 9 or 10 round tournament...I'm bad at math. The tournament would only be conducted once a week if that often. The first couple of rounds would be to reduce the number down to 256 and from there we'd a clean 8 rounds.

This tournament's TV rights would be sold separately and could be spread out over all 351 schools rather than just the Power leagues. It's a way to get the Mid-Majors involved and create an opportunity where upsets could abound. It's just that winning this crown will be separate from winning a national title. Nonetheless, with every single school involved then it will feel in some ways like a national title. From that point, let the debate begin and that's part of the value to the average fan. I think it would be a lot of fun and wouldn't take up much of the schedule for very many schools.

(08-17-2019 09:19 PM)AllTideUp Wrote:  They say the NCAA Tournament is the best thing going in sports. I can be sympathetic to that idea to some degree, but the NCAA is fleecing the schools.

I would also argue that the value of college basketball is being suppressed by the interference of the NCAA. They don't care, of course, because this is the only way they'll get paid. In short, the rest of us are being put on the back burner.

Let me propose a few alternatives that I think might actually make life better for everyone that isn't based in Indianapolis.

1. The postseason should be controlled by the conferences, not the NCAA.

This is crucial because the value of the college basketball regular season is very low, but the current deal for the NCAA Tournament brings in $1 billion annually in TV revenue. That's not counting ticket sales and other rights. I've heard the figure is roughly $2.2 billion annually.

That's a lot of money...duh. Biggest problem is a lot of it is being siphoned off to the NCAA. I'll go ahead and assume another fair chunk of it is being used to pay for neutral site arenas and other amenities that aren't necessary.

I know this won't be popular with the Mid-Majors, but most of the audience that watches these games are either fans of the Power schools(not just P5) or just people that love betting. Excluding the entrance of most Mid-Major conferences is a reasonable position because they aren't really generating the money.

I would start by knocking the number of entrants down to 32 and playing the first 3 rounds in home arenas of the higher seeds. The Final Four could be at a neutral site where it can garner more significant ticket sales and be accompanied by more of a spectacle. That makes sense, but using a neutral site for every game does not. It's expensive and it increases travel costs.

2. Alter how teams makes the postseason.

This is somewhat like 1A, but this is also crucial because it makes the regular season much more valuable.

As it stands, you play your schedule and then you play your conference tournament. Then you hope your resume is good enough according to the committee's standards to make the big dance. The Tournament itself is great, but it's awfully boring getting there.

I've proposed some ideas on how to alter the regular season in the past, but most of my thoughts were probably not realistic. I think what I'm about to say is though.

First, scrap the preseason tournaments and cap the number of games at 30. A conference can utilize as few or as many of those games as they wish during the regular season, but a school cannot play more than 30 games that will actually impact their national rankings.

The conference season should then be played as a means to trim down participants for the respective conference tournaments. I would say conference tournaments need to consist of no more than 8 teams if that many. This little feature makes the conference season a little more valuable as it actually has real impact on whether or not you enter much less win the conference tournament.

Secondly, the rule should be that entrance into the national title tournament should be dependent upon how you finish in your conference. Instead of allowing teams to be selected at large, the teams should be selected to fill spots based on where they are in the standings. If you win your conference tournament then you finished first you get a higher seed in the national tournament. If you are the runner-up then you get into the next pot. So on and so forth until 32 spots are filled. The higher you finish in your conference, the higher seed you will get and the more likely you are to host a home game in the postseason.

In other words, some conferences won't get 8 while some conferences only get 2. Each league will get an equal number...or at least we'll figure the math out as soon as we figure out how many leagues are in this association. The money should be split equally among all schools rather than giving teams credits.

3. What about everyone else in D1?

Some of you will be familiar with this concept, but you non-soccer fans out there may be new to this. Are you familiar with the concept of a domestic cup tournament.

In England, they call it the FA Cup. The Football Association allows all its members to compete in one tournament throughout the year. It's single elimination and literally everyone gets in.

You heard me...everyone gets in. There are currently 351 D1 teams. What if we had a tournament that featured all of them? Call it the Division 1 Cup if you will.

What I'm talking about would be a separate tournament to the national title tournament at the end of the season. This event would take place all year long and would be in addition to the 30 games everyone is allowed to play.

Right before the regular season starts, we seed our 351(an ever-growing number by the way) schools and create one bracket. That means we'd have a 9 or 10 round tournament...I'm bad at math. The tournament would only be conducted once a week if that often. The first couple of rounds would be to reduce the number down to 256 and from there we'd a clean 8 rounds.

This tournament's TV rights would be sold separately and could be spread out over all 351 schools rather than just the Power leagues. It's a way to get the Mid-Majors involved and create an opportunity where upsets could abound. It's just that winning this crown will be separate from winning a national title. Nonetheless, with every single school involved then it will feel in some ways like a national title. From that point, let the debate begin and that's part of the value to the average fan. I think it would be a lot of fun and wouldn't take up much of the schedule for very many schools.

First I think this works best if we have a P6 for basketball and have a West coast basketball only conference and an expanded Big East for 6 basketball conferences. The P4 from football and two P basketball only conferences.

I think the tourney should be 48 schools. The top 6 schools from each conference are seeded and comprise the tournament. We have a first round single elimination round for the last 32 in. The top 16 draw a bye. The following weekend the emerging 16 and the 16 seeded are the 32 that will appear at 8 regional sites which will be at the #1 seeds home gym. The elite 8 will be at the same site for the finals and will play it out.

Tournament money should be distributed this way after overhead is covered: 1/2 divided equally among the 6 conferences and 1/2 divided among the 48 teams based on wins through the final.

Since no conference gets more or less than 6 schools in it gives enough meaning to the regular season. If the two basketball only conferences have at least a dozen schools with 16 total allowable it works for those who don't have football programs because the conference earns a good chunk of revenue divided as few as 12 ways.

I agree with most of what you offer ATU but there are some strong basketball draws that aren't in the P5.

Anyway I toss that out for your consideration.

I think the reason that the tournament is so much more valuable than the regular season is simply the brackets. Fans of basketball schools care all season long but many casual fans fill out office pool brackets and tune in hoping to see upsets like VCU taking out KU unexpectedly. The average fan without a specific rooting interest will cheer for whoever they picked in their bracket, and aside from that for the underdog.

They’d be foolish to mess with the tournament in any significant way

(08-20-2019 06:27 AM)Gamecock Wrote:  They’d be foolish to mess with the tournament in any significant way

That's the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" argument. As far as being lucrative and captivating interest from millions all over the country, and parts of the world, you're absolutely right.

Personally, I don't want to see it over-expanded, nor reduced to the point of shuting out some of the lower profile conferences. The selection process still has a political dimension, some years moreso than others.

There's always the NIT for those that the bubble didn't pop their way.

(08-20-2019 11:01 AM)OdinFrigg Wrote:  

(08-20-2019 06:27 AM)Gamecock Wrote:  They’d be foolish to mess with the tournament in any significant way

That's the "if it ain't broke, don't fix it" argument. As far as being lucrative and captivating interest from millions all over the country, and parts of the world, you're absolutely right.

Personally, I don't want to see it over-expanded, nor reduced to the point of shuting out some of the lower profile conferences. The selection process still has a political dimension, some years moreso than others.

There's always the NIT for those that the bubble didn't pop their way.

That still doesn't justify the NCAA keeping money for up to 6 years to draw interest on it before dispensing a pittance of the 2.2 billion they make from it per year, or for holding onto over 1 billion in two separate endowments. If not for the NCAA basketball could be almost as lucrative for our schools as football and would most certainly represent a larger % of a schools athletic revenue than 20%.

If the money is held that long, the majority of the earned interest on that needs to be disbursed with the payments to the entitled schools. What is the NCAA entitled to beyond overhead expenses?[/quote]

How long does it take for the networks (CBS) to cut the checks to the NCAA?

Has this policy been voted on at a NCAA convention? Or do the executives handle it and the members are not challenging it?

As far as making college basketball more valuable, the core issue is not the size of the NCAA Tournament. The core issue is how you qualify.

Leaving it up to a committee to randomly pick enough applicants without a cut and dry criteria puts a serious damper on the regular season. That's the problem and all we'd really have to do is take the Tournament back from the NCAA and things would improve dramatically.

I'd be perfectly fine leaving the same level of access to the Mid-Majors as long as the NCAA wasn't in charge of the process.

Right now, the regular season is a snooze fest for all but hardcore fans of the sport. There just aren't enough of them to make college basketball all that it can be. The season could be so much more compelling if your conference results would play the pivotal role in determining your entrance to the postseason. As it stands, all fans know is that you have to win a bunch of games in order to be considered for the NCAA Tournament...well...how thrilling.

The college football regular season is the most compelling regular season in all of American sport and basketball could learn some lessons. The thing about football is you can keep a running tab on where your team stands. You know what games you need to win and how often. You know what benchmarks need to be met in order to make your conference championship game as well as the CFP. With basketball, it's a crap shoot that changes from year to year and the only clue we have as to what the committee might do is what Joe Lunardi thinks. Again...how thrilling.

I know people don't like change, and functionally there's nothing wrong with the college basketball postseason, but the regular season needs to change. People didn't want to change the postseason for college football either, but the CFP is better and more profitable than the old system. The college football postseason could be better as well, I understand, but that's a different discussion. Point being, the changes made didn't fundamentally alter the popularity of the regular season.

All in all, the college basketball postseason would be improved if we altered how you qualify. It wouldn't detract from what makes the tournament interesting at all.

That and we wouldn't have the NCAA acting as a self-interested middle man.