No postseason is perfect, but try explaining March Madness to an alien: the NCAA Champion is the team that wins six games in a row (seven for VCU). That's it.The problem is that I don't know any way to fix this without shrinking the tournament to 48 teams (or fewer), the idea being to give at least some subset of elite teams a first-round bye. But we know the NCAA isn't foregoing the revenue from those games, so that's a non-starter. The real problem is deeper, and it's structural.
The regular season is, in essence, meaningless beyond giving the high seeds an easier path. (And that doesn't always work out either, as VCU got in with wins over fellow low seed FSU, as well as mercurial Georgetown and Purdue — a path that any team would gladly have.) All of the 68 teams start over in March, even ones that might have struggled in the regular season. Like, say, losing five out of their last seven, and drawing the scorn of Vitale, Bilas and Lunardi on national TV. VCU's a hot team, but one of the best four teams of 2010-11?
It's sacrilege to say, but in point of fact, college football does a better job than college basketball of crowning the best team in the sport. You can't slip up, not at any time. That old BCS talking point is actually true: the regular season matters.
So long as players continue to leave elite programs after one year, then any advantage these schools have based on their ability to recruit the best players is neutralized and well-coached teams dominated by upperclassmen like VCU and Butler have a better chance. I miss the college basketball from when I was growing up, when you'd see players like Patrick Ewing stick around for four years -- the players became more familiar, and the game overall was played better. (Seriously, it's depressing watching all of these end-of-game sets which are "point guard dribbles around until there's five second to go, then fires a lousy three.")
At the same time, I don't like the idea of restricting the ability of adults to earn a living -- and eighteen-year-olds are adults. The idea that we force them into an academic environment in which some have no interest whatsoever because that's the most viable pre-professional path is nutty; maybe Brandon Jennings was onto something, or at least the D-League needs to be a financially viable option for high school graduates with no interest in college.
So, yes, two competing ideals in tension: what's best for college basketball is to have elite players choose to stay in college for four years, but from a rights/legal/moral perspective I'd like them to be free to not attend college at all. Which leads to one inexorable conclusion: the best way for schools to provide incentives for players to stay for four years is to surrender the myth of amateurism and allow college athletes to be compensated for all the revenue they're generating. Everyone gets rich off big time college sports except for the athletes who compete in them.
This has now gotten seriously longer than I had intended. Bottom line: if you think the past few years represent a problem, we don't have to change the tournament itself; we have to change something much larger.
There is absolutely nothing to fix (other than re-limiting the field to 65 or 64 teams). I do not care one bit who the best team is. Petchesky's anti-underdog undertones are weird. Don't we love it when the underdogs topple the better teams? Maybe I'm just weird that way.
ReplyDeleteIn conclusion, John Calipari is the devil.
What's interesting is that it doesn't seem like the players compete as though the regular season is meaningless, even though it largely is (beyond winning enough to qualify for the tournament). So it's a legimate stance to say "I don't care if the tournament is accurate in identifying the best team, as long as it's fun." But I'd rather it do both.
ReplyDeleteAnd on Calipari: co-sign. It'll be wonderful to have him vacate Final Four appearances for three different universities.
This sounds like sour grapes to me. More and more, the teams that are able to get their underclassmen to stick around are successful. It doesn't surprise or bother me.
ReplyDeleteTeams who are actually teams, forged together from years of playing the likes of Valparaiso and Towson in arenas that are nothing more than glorified gyms, getting on a bus for a four hour ride home, and then getting up in time for class the next morning. That's shocking?
The only playoff format that is going to get you the "best" team crowned most years is the NBA, where the best-of-seven format means that there are far, far fewer upsets than in other leagues where you have hot goalies (NHL), hot pitching staffs and incredibly small sample sizes versus the regular season (MLB) or an oblong ball bouncing the wrong way a few times in a single-elimination game (NFL). I have written extensively on the college football postseason and it is not better than anything. It is terrible and awful, unless you somehow think a system where you can win every game you play and still not be champion is remotely defensible.
ReplyDeleteThe NCAA champ might not be "the best team," but it is almost always one of the best teams, and barring a VCU win, you're going to have a champ that was either preseason number 10 (UK), number four in the country at the start of 2011 (UConn) or the national runner-up from last season (Butler).
But is that a case of "getting" them to stick around or being a school where the underclassmen have no NBA potential? Are there particular colleges/coaches with a better record of retaining NBA-level talent once they've piqued Chad Ford's interest?
ReplyDeleteThe counter-argument to the claim that football does a better job of picking its national champion is that last year, TCU, a team that went undefeated and capped off its season with a spectacular win over Wisconsin in the Rose Bowl, did not get a chance to contend for the BCS Championship simply because of what conference it came from. Granted, TCU will be moving to the Big East and ensuring themselves a BCS slot for several years to come, but that doesn't solve the problem.
ReplyDeleteAt least in the NCAA tournament, every team has (in theory) an equal chance to prove themselves.
The logical fallacy in this line of thinking (i.e., "the key to having quality college basketball is keeping the kids in school longer than a year or two") is that John Calipari all but shoved four freshmen from last year's Elite Eight team out the door, and into the NBA draft (Wall and Cousins were top five picks) -- and then promptly reloaded with Brandon Knight, Terrence Jones and Doron Lamb, making this year's Final Four. Of course, if you believe that Coach Cal is the devil incarnate, then this year's success at UK is only more proof of his anti-Christ-like qualities. I'm not sure even Duke, Carolina or Kansas could lose two NBA top five picks and four first-rounders, and yet improve over the previous year's NCAA showing. (For the record, I'm a UConn fan, and would like nothing better than for the Huskies to beat Kentucky on Saturday. But whatever you think of Calipari, the man can recruit, and he sure can coach.)
ReplyDeleteI saw an interesting stat a few months ago: in every BCS Championship game, the #1 team in the national polls has played the #2 team. I haven't checked ESPN's math, but assuming they're correct, isn't that a good thing? Sure, it's a shame that TCU went undefeated and didn't get to compete for the national championship, but Auburn and Oregon were also undefeated, and ranked higher in both polls. Since college football will not switch to a playoff, would people rather we return to the days of the disputed national champion?
ReplyDeleteI do think a big reason my beloved Jayhawks folded this year was the lack of senior leadership. Everyone compared this team to the 2008 championship team, but there was no real leadership this year. No guy like Chalmers or Collins who could take the ball and make something happen. The 08 team had a difficult time in the tournament, but having a core of juniors and seniors who had played together for three or four years was key to overcoming the problems and eventually winning the whole thing. However, I don't begrudge the Morris twins or Thomas Robinson from going out and making a boatload of money. It's part of the game now, and I fully understand that they didn't go to Kansas for its top-five journalism program.
ReplyDeleteOh, and I forgot. Calipari is totally the devil.
ReplyDeleteYou are putting way, way too much faith in the polls. The computers have been neutered to just reflect the polls and the polls that factor in are voted on by people like this: http://rivals.yahoo.com/ncaa/football/blog/dr_saturday/post/At-least-the-BCS-is-in-good-hands-with-the-Harri?urn=ncaaf-125765
ReplyDeleteThe fallacy in that line of thinking is that you can only succeed that way as long as everyone else is *also* losing their underclassmen early. Calipari's doing this against inferior competition.
ReplyDeleteYes, he can recruit and coach.
College football will eventually have a playoff, because it's not only the "top two" teams (in a system in which the elite teams don't play each other frequently during the season) which have earned the right to contest for the trophy. And the money will be worth it for the NCAA.
ReplyDeleteThe NCAA champ might not be "the best team," but it is almost always one of the best teams, and barring a VCU win, you're going to have a champ that was either preseason number 10 (UK), number four in the country at the start of 2011 (UConn) or the national runner-up from last season (Butler).
ReplyDeleteThat's a stretch. This Butler team isn't nearly as good as last year's team, with quite a few embarrassing losses during the season, and UConn followed that lofty January ranking with a .500 record in conference play. You can't even make a case for VCU. But unless Kentucky wins, I don't think you can seriously claim that the 2011 national champion was one of the best teams of the 2010-2011 season.
Now, that still leaves open the question of whether 2011 is a fluke, or whether it represents a new phase for the NCAA Tournament. I hope it's the former.
I do not care one bit who the best team is. Petchesky's anti-underdog undertones are weird. Don't we love it when the underdogs topple the better teams? Maybe I'm just weird that way.
ReplyDeleteI don't think anyone's weird here - it may just be the difference between being a fan of college basketball and a fan of the NCAA Tournament. I can see why it might be frustrating to follow a sport for four months and see it resolved by a two-week lottery.
UConn made a trade-off during the Big East season. Calhoun decided to play his freshmen, getting them as many minutes as possible. That resulted in a lot of "Confused freshmen watching Kemba shoot" losses in a hellacious league, but they got their reps and have been awesome the last two weeks. On the other hand, you have Notre Dame, who played a bunch of seniors and fell a game short of the Big East regular season title, but they had no room for growth or an extra gear come March.
ReplyDeleteYou could apply the same thing to Butler. They had to replace Hayward, so Stevens shuffled his lineup, benched his starting point guard at one point and took some hits during the season, but he was confident his team could go on the necessary run late to surge into the tournament. I don't think you can look at the last two Marchs and say Butler is anything but a great basketball team. In addition to that, they also had a great draw with some beatable teams they took advantage of.
In addition, pundits were saying all year that there were no great teams, and it appears they were very much correct. A lack of a few dominant teams and a weak NBA draft are usually correlated, especially when you compare it to something like 2008, when your Final Four included Derrick Rose, Kevin Love, Russell Westbrook, Mario Chalmers, Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson and a whole slew of other NBA draft picks. This was an open year, and teams took advantage.
Oh, the tournament is still going on? I thought it ended when every team affiliated with any member of my immediate family lost in the same weekend.
ReplyDeleteI read this somewhere (Jay Bilas?) this weekend, and I loved it: The lesson of college football is, don't screw up. The lesson of college basketball is, don't give up. I understand the "not the best team" argument, but that sounds noble to me, and as a fan, the NCAA tournament is so much better than the bowl system it isn't even funny.
ReplyDeletePaying players--I go back and forth. Only a precious few players actually contribute to an athletic department's profit (if they even have a profit).
I feel like the best way to improve the quality of play is to move the required college service time up to two years. It still doesn't cut into the players' ability to monetize their skills and talents, but imagine college basketball with a second year of Oden and Durant?
ReplyDeleteI didn't say Calipari isn't very good at what he does. I said that he is the devil. The devil is very good at what he does.
ReplyDelete"Everyone gets rich off big time college sports except for the athletes who compete in them." Wait a minute. The schools aren't getting rich -- from year-to-year maybe a couple dozen athletic departments generate profits. The schools use the money generated from football and basketball to subsidize every other sport -- and generally still need millions of dollars from the university to cover costs. I'll grant you that the big conferences and the NCAA generate tens of millions off of the big sports -- but where does that money go? I don't think they issue dividend checks. Seems to me that the only individuals actually getting rich off of college sports are the coaches.
ReplyDeleteThis isn't meant to be an attack, but what other *individuals* are getting rich off of big-time college sports?
Coolege football bowl execs, conference administrators, the networks, college athletic directors come to mind.
ReplyDeleteI'll buy bowl execs, conference admins, and ADs, although note that depending on the amount of revenue they are generating/overseeing, they *might* be worth it.
ReplyDeleteI don't buy the networks -- they have to pay for the rights to broadcast the games, and the NCAA and the conferences drive a hard bargain. CBS paid so much for March Madness rights a few years ago that it was losing money and had to take on a cable partner.
I guess my ultimate point is that a much larger percentage of revenue from "big time college sports" goes to actually help the folks it purports to help (student athletes) than most large companies or institutions.
As an SEC fan, I know how a lot of these teams go undefeated--by playing cupcakes out of conference and refusing to play legit non-conference teams. People knock Boise State and TCU for their strength of schedule, but I know Boise State for one has tried to arrange games with both Alabama and Florida, who have both refused. If we're going to differentiate between different schools with the same record in the polls by looking to their strength of schedule, then teams who willfully schedule cupcakes to get big wins should be penalized.
ReplyDeleteI think players should earn a wage, but not big time cash. Basketball and football subsidize a slew of other sports, and womens' athletics, that a free market would not. Now, I do not watch any of these other sports (though I have lingered on both college lacrosse and hockey while flipping channels), but I like that they are there.
ReplyDeleteTo sum up: John Calipari is, indeed, the devil, and I look forward to this final four appearance never having existed, thus making my pick of Ohio State correct.
In essence, the regular season is a series of exhibition games. Their only real purpose is to provide background knowledge leading into March.
ReplyDeletePost-Season is different from the regular season. Obviously. One of them counts.
I do not care a bit about regular season college basketball, but I love March.
Conversely, I have no interest in who wins the college football Calistoga Nestle Cracker Jack Bowl, but I love going to games and watching on Saturdays.
Maybe for the casual fan, but I disagree. I consider them almost two separate entities. You spend from January through March rooting your team on through long-standing rivalries and decades-long grudges. And in March you hope your team can string six strong games in a row to win it all against teams you've never heard of or have only watched in spurts on ESPN.
ReplyDeleteYou're absolutely right. No need for those 13 executives to be making that much money. But I don't think they move the needle all that much.
ReplyDeleteFiesta Bowl CEO in juuuuust a little bit of trouble: http://nyti.ms/ggtgsH
ReplyDeleteOf course, that assumes that the rivalry game actually happens--on the women's side, UConn and Tennessee haven't played in the regular season since 2007 because of bad blood about recruiting tactics, and that rivalry typically gets played out (if at all) in a season very late in the tourney.
ReplyDeleteNot this year! (Go Irish.)
ReplyDeleteI'd also prefer a system similar to baseball. You'd allow guys to go straight from the high schools to the pros, but anyone who chooses to go to college would have to stay two years (it's three years in baseball, but a two-year requirement is probably more realistic for basketball). Krzyzewski also has recommended such a system. But I don't think it's ever going to happen.
ReplyDeleteThe amazing thing about Butler's run this year is that it's a midmajor that made a second straight Final Four trip even after its best player from a year ago left after his sophomore year to become a lottery pick. The huge postseason performance by junior guard Shelvin Mack increases the likelihood Butler will have to replace an early entry for a second straight year.
It's true that outside of the hotbeds in which college basketball is much more important than college football (Kentucky, UNC, Duke, Kansas, Indiana, Gonzaga, most schools in the Big East), hardly anyone pays attention to college basketball before February, and many don't start really taking notice until the week of the conference tournaments. I'd like to see a 48-team tournament to increase the importance of the regular season (20 fewer at-large spots would make the regular season much more crucial), but the tournament certainly won't be contracting anytime in the near future. It's only going to expand.
ReplyDeleteThat said, even in the unlikely event that the NCAA did take steps to increase the importance of the regular season, how many more people would really pay attention? I think the lack of attention paid to college basketball for much of the year owes as much to the nature of the sports calendar as the irrelevance of the regular season. Outside those areas I mentioned in the last paragraph, how many people (aside from college students at schools where basketball's the major sport) would pay that much attention to college basketball in December and January while the NFL is still going on? Even if the regular season were somehow made more important, I think most casual sports fans wouldn't start paying close attention until after the Super Bowl.
College football is the only sport I follow to any extent anymore, precisely because the regular season is still meaningful.
ReplyDeleteIf (when) playoffs come, I'll watch the final game if my alma mater's in it. Otherwise ,,,
I am a KU Alum and admittedly, I'm still licking some wounds here after the trampling we got at the hands of VCU.
ReplyDeleteHowever, I don't feel cheated. At this point, I almost view the season in two parts - or three parts actually - the regular season, the Big 12 Tournament and March Madness. I love the sheer oddity that is March Madness, anything can happen. And that makes me watch it every single year. But I still enjoy the regular season and am quite proud of how the Jayhawks handled themselves this season, paricularly in light of the team's support of Robinson when he lost his entire family within a 3 week time period.
VCU won the game, pure and simple. And I am okay with that.
Now, if you will excuse me, I need to go weep quietly in a corner.
Adam, North Carolina won its most recent national title (in 09) largely because Tyler Hansbrough, Ty Lawson, Wayne Ellington and Danny Green all chose to stay in school after reaching the Final Four in 08. All might have been drafted after the 2008 season, though they weren't sure-fire first-round picks. Hansbrough, Lawson and Ellington went in the first round in 2009, while Green was taken in the second round.
ReplyDeleteThat said, Williams didn't have nearly as much luck holding on to his top underclassmen after winning the 2005 title. Sean May, Raymond Felton and Marvin Williams all chose to leave early after they won that championship.
Isn't that the problem? There's a reason why the NFL only plays one month of exhibition games.
ReplyDeleteAnd a great team doesn't lose to a 9-21 Youngstown State team. I don't care how much shuffling they were doing at the time. Butler's 2011 squad has had a great NCAA Tournament, but they can't be considered a great team, or even a particularly good one.
But there's the other issue, which is that the revenue from college football and college basketball is largely used to fund scholarships in non-revenue sports. And while the money may be going back to other student-athletes, there are significant demographic differences between the two sets of students that are tough to overlook.
ReplyDeleteHow meaningful was the regular season to TCU? To Boise last year? To Auburn in 2004?
ReplyDelete@CW
ReplyDeleteOf course the polls can disappoint. Believe me, I know. Penn State (my alma mater) had undefeated teams in 1968, 1969, 1973 and 1994 that weren't ranked number 1. I know.
But too many people are assuming the regular season will still be as good as ever but with really exciting playoffs tacked on at the end. Think about this: the great Ohio State-Michigan rivalry. Imagine an undefeated Ohio State team getting blown out in the last game of the season by a mediocre Michigan team because they (OSU) decided to bench their six best players so as not to get them injured "going into the playoffs" when they'd already "clinched a playoff spot".
Casual fans don't care about the regular season in college basketball for the same reason they don't care about it in pro basketball #1 - too many games #2 - its not football.
ReplyDeleteExcept fiddling.
ReplyDeleteBut that would never happen, not in a million years. Does it ever happen in college basketball, where there is just blatant benching at the end of the season? Do you want to be the Ohio State coach who benches his players, loses to Michigan and attempts to explain "Well, ya know, we were looking at the big picture." If you're a Penn State fan, you don't actually have a rival, but these end of season games (GT/UGA, ND/USC, Iron Bowl, UM/OSU and dozens more) are blood feuds. There is zero chance a coach doesn't go all out to win those games. And every serious playoff proposal I've read, Wetzel's being the best, has at least one home game or a bye for the top seeds. The polls are almost always too tightly packed to blow a game late in the season and not cost yourself in some way.
ReplyDeleteIf anything, if there wre playoffs, there would be more meaningful games. How many games actually matter in November most years? Three or four a weekend? Most fans could care less who wins the ACC title game, but if Virginia Tech is guaranteed an at-large berth to a playoff and the third SEC or Big Ten team's postseason hopes rest on Florida State not pulling off the upset, there would be signifcantly increased interest in way more games in the final weeks of the season.
@Guest
ReplyDeleteIt'll happen. The hard-fought games will be for teams "on the bubble". And how about being the Ohio State coach who has to explain why the star quarterback got injured trying to beat Michigan when a playoff spot was already assured and now the Buckeyes get blown out by Boise State in the first round of the playoffs while the star QB is roaming the sidelines with his arm in a cast and the backup guy is throwing interceptions?
Those "blood feuds" will diminish in importance if playoffs come. Only the playoffs will be important. Does Ohio State-Michigan draw the attention in basketball that it does in football?
And I laugh at those proposals, like Wetzel's. NCAA basketball playoffs started with eight teams, way back when, just for a few conference champs. In a few years, there will be 32 and then 64 teams playing in football, too.
Why? Outside of the general tendency for all playoff schemes to mushroom, think of the teams now playing in bowl games - 70 of them last seaon. Sure, some bowls are more prestigious than others, but they're still bowl games. What happens if only eight (or even 16) teams are in the playoffs? The answer I hear is that there will still be bowl games for the other 54 to 62 teams. The problem with that answer is that under a playoff regime the bowl games are no longer the big show. They'll be as second-rate as the NIT is in basketball. That used to be a much bigger deal. And those bowl teams will be shouting for inclusion in "the big dance".
(I've also heard that nobody will subject athletes to six playoff games in a sport as rough as football. Yet that's about how many playoff games it takes to win a state championship in high school football in the more populous states.)
I really don't think there's any difference in the perception of non-BCS bowl games between the status quo and under a playoff system. They're second-rate either way.
ReplyDeleteMaybe Butler belonged in the Meineke Car Care Bowl.
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