By Katie Kieffer
Image credit: Ben Woloszyn Photography/www.benwphoto.com
If you can’t buy a bucket, you have no business in the NCAA Basketball Tournament. I blogged here about how the NFL is corrupting itself with perverse “equalizers” like the Rooney Rule. I wrote here and here about Congressional plans to force college football to switch from the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) system to a playoff system.
Although Big East Commissioner John Marinatto is getting chatty court-side with former president Bill Clinton and ESPN did an extensive story and video stepping us through President Obama’s bracket, the NCAA doesn’t need politicians to break its players’ ankles and short-sell its fans – it’s doing it on its own.
The NCAA is currently considering expanding its tournament from 65 to 96 teams. The 96 expansion option is a good analogy for what can happen when bureaucracy, greed and politically ambitious snobs multiply, whether in business, politics or entertainment.
Scrambling for pennies
The NCAA generates 90 percent of its income through the NCAA tournament. Now, some sports analysts and coaches are accusing the NCAA of trying to boost profits by expanding March Madness to include more teams at the expense of the sport, players and fans.
“Jim Isch, the N.C.A.A.’s interim president, and the 18 university presidents and chancellors on the Division I board decide” whether to change the tournament’s format to the 96 team system, The New York Times reports. If they do, it will likely have the following repercussions:
- Hurt students. ESPN analyst, Dick Vitale, says it best, baby!
ESPN sportscaster, Dick Vitale. Image credit: Associated Press
“To mess with something that is so good is absurd. What they should be doing is concentrating on the integrity of the game and doing something about the current student-athlete. For example it is an absolute disgrace to the term ‘student athlete’ in the manual of the NCAA guide when we look at the one-and-done scenario.
The one-and-done is simply a situation of players playing to put their skills in front of NBA people and hoping to go to the next level and could care less about academics, could care less about the value of an education. They should be concentrating on that.
They should be concentrating on violations and things happening within our system that have led to the embarrassment and humiliation at Southern Cal, what happened in the Memphis situation. All of that should be in consideration not spending time trying to ramrod 96 teams and to blow up something that has been so fantastic to so many people. It is the greatest three weeks in all of sports. Why don’t we just go to all 300 and let everybody in?”
Furthermore, Davidson Coach Bob McKillop told The New York Times:
Davidson Wildcats head coach Bob McKillop. Image credit: REUTERS/John Gress.
“Isn’t this whole thing a window into society? We’ve diminished so many other things. We’ve diminished test scores. We’ve diminished admission policies. We diminish so much for reasons that are not accentuating excellence and performance. It’s almost too inclusive.”
- Water down the tournament.The Philadelphia Inquirer reports that ESPN’s resident bracketologist, St. Joseph’s Joe Lunardi: “…recently put together a mock 96-team bracket for this season. Carolina was one of the last teams in, and 13 of the 16 Big East teams made it.”
ESPN bracketologist, Joe Lunardi. Image credit: AP.
“I think that’s silly,” Lunardi said. “I really don’t know how else to say it, and that’s no disrespect to the 13th team. . . . From a basketball standpoint, [expansion] is absolutely not necessary. No team that has a legitimate chance of being a national champion is excluded now. It’s not like we need a bigger field to make the champion more legitimate.
“I hope they give it considerable thought. How great is it when a late regular-season game has so much meaning or a conference tournament game has so much meaning? To a large degree, that will be diluted if the most dramatic expansion plan goes into place.”
- Let down fans. As Michael Hiestand of USA Today puts it:
“Diminishing the Big Dance and popping debates about who’s on the bubble would inevitably devalue college basketball’s regular-season, conference tournaments and its NCAA selection show.
And other than gratitude from coaches hanging onto their jobs because grade inflation got them into the tournament, what would the NCAA get in return? Probably lots of new games of little interest to casual fans nationally — thus lots of low ratings.
Consider that CBS’ first-round NCAA time slots last year, which combined regionalized audiences from overlapping games, averaged 4.2% of U.S. TV households. Showing teams that wouldn’t make the tournament in its present format likely would produce smaller ratings.”
A better strategy
Hard work, sacrifice, perseverance and a positive attitude are traits of leaders. Minnesota Gopher basketball coach, Tubby Smith, motivated his players to ignore the naysayers and overcome team challenges to achieve a berth in the NCAA tournament.
Image credit: www.gophersportsproperties.com
Smith pushed his players to come together as a team and demand respect from the college basketball community. He set the bar high, and his players responded. High, yet realistic expectations are the best motivators in life.
In our government, as in sports, there is a tendency to lower expectations so that “everyone is a winner.” Some people and some teams are losers and they don’t deserve a trophy, get over it. They won’t work hard, they have negative attitudes and they are unwilling to make sacrifices to achieve goals.
Likewise, the NCAA needs to trust that the money will come if it does right by its players and fans and sets high levels of performance expectations. This will improve the game and bring long-term money to college basketball. Otherwise, its unchallenged ballers will be running to Kobe Bryant for ankle insurance that covers their weak, unchallenged ankle tendons.
