RE: How Division 1 college basketball could change going forward
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Worse, still, Sankey is proposing to condemn 20 of the D1 conferences to perpetual oblivion in a NIT conference that fewer people will watch.
In 1938 and 1939, the NIT was considered better than the NCAA. From 1940 to the mid-1950's, it was considered equally prestigious, according to many sources.
Then, the NCAA tournament organizers started to throw their weight around, and the NCAA pulled ahead, although even as late as 1970, there were outstanding teams that chose to play in the NIT, rather than in the NCAA tournament.
After 1970, the NCAA started adding at-large bids to prevent many power conference teams from playing in the NIT, but even that didn't satisfy them.
Finally, THEY BOUGHT the NIT outright, because only then could they alone dictate which teams played in which tournament.
In the process, they took a great, wonderful tournament, and made it what it is today - a second-tier tournament, still interesting and worthwhile, but just a shadow of its former self.
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Now what they're proposing is to turn a NIT tournament that has lost much of its former relevance into a tournament that is almost completely irrelevant to 90% of college basketball fans.
The Presidents of the 270+ non-P5 universities and all of the conference commissioners should be outraged by Sankey's proposal. They should not only oppose the proposal in the NCAA convention, but in addition, they should file a class-action federal lawsuit to block it, because this proposal will cause them great harm if implemented.
That should include the Presidents of the non-P5 conferences (AAC, MWC, A-10, etc.) that would be included in a revamped NCAA basketball tournament, as well.
Why? For two reasons:
First, they should oppose it on principle because it is so unfair and so harmful to the 20 other D1 conferences, and because it has no legitimate justification.
Second, they should oppose it because there is no evidence whatsoever that they will stop being screwed over by the NCAA selection committees just as badly as they've been screwed over for the past 50 years.
This is a NCAA selection system that has disenfranchised the non-P5 conferences systematically, taking more and more of the at-large bids and handing them over to the P5 conferences.
In 2010, there were almost as many non-P5 at-large teams as there were P5 at-large teams.
Not any more! Last year, there were only 8 non-P5 at-large teams and 29 P5 at-large teams. This was no accident. The P5 conferences have grabbed more and more of those bids every year.
There are P5 supporters who have had the unremitting gall to demand that all of the at-large bids to go to the P5 teams.
I hope the AAC and MWC and other conferences offer them a few ideas about where they can put this proposal, and tell them to get lost.
Let the P5 conferences hold their own tournament. If the AAC, MWC, A-10 etc. stay on with the 20 other conferences, the NCAA tournament will go on very successfully.
WHAT SANKEY IS ASKING THE AAC, MWC, ET AL. TO DO IS TO COLLUDE WITH THEM.
They should give a clear and unequivocal answer: "We Shall Not."
Screw 'em. Let the P5 set up their own football league too.
If ESPN/Disney didn't think that the G5 conferences could function successfully, even they were to end up playing in a league of their own, they never would have committed to spending billions to broadcast their games years and years from now.
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