Around College Basketball

Although I agree that more games might help financials with tv contracts, you could argue that the opposite could be true. Every football game, since there are so few, is special. That’s why people stay home to watch the games throughout the season. Of course, stadium size and the country’s (unreasonable imo) love of football has something to do with that as well.
 
Marillac2 said:
The NBA regular season became meaningless long after they went to 82 games. MLB plays 162 games and doesn’t have the same meaningless feeling. There are more baseball posts here in a weekend than the NBA gets in two months during the regular season.

If basketball schools want to even be on the same planet as football schools financially, they have to play more games.

College football teams are playing 14-15 games now. The NFL plays just 17 and that only recently was moved up from 16.
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Obviously the relevance of any given regular season is directly proportionate to the percentage of teams that make the post season. NHL and NBA have proven that in spades. Hard core fans only. Football and baseball have been measured in their playoff expansion so not as bad. That said, even with a lower percentage, the regular MLB season may be relevant but it's still boring. ;) Once there's 128 teams in the dance the college hoops season will be even less relevant.

But diluting the college basketball schedule further is not going to increase the value of college hoops. There's more than enough games to televise nightly so I wouldn't expect any significant media rights increase by playing more. College football, and football in general, is what it is, a media rights monster. Hoops isn't catching up. Football teams are still just playing once a week as far as I can tell, college hoops teams twice a week on average. That's just about right.

So with an equitable competition/school balance and a dubious prospect of generating any significant incremental revenue what do the schools have to gain by extending the season.

And I didn't even try to raise a "student athlete" argument. I know better than that.
 
bamafan said:
Slight correction by dear Marillac-NFL 17 regular season plus potential 4 more for a playoff team. College 12 regular season with potential of 5 post season games for playoff teams.
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Ok, let’s take the simple 12 to 17 regular season comparison for simplicity. That is 70.5% of a full NFL season. The college basketball equivalent would be 58 games.

If college basketball wants to stop getting trampled by football they need to even the playing field somewhat.

I don’t think college basketball should be playing 50 games, but I also do think college football should be playing 70.5% of an NFL schedule either.
 
austour said:
Obviously the relevance of any given regular season is directly proportionate to the percentage of teams that make the post season. NHL and NBA have proven that in spades. Hard core fans only. Football and baseball have been measured in their playoff expansion so not as bad. That said, even with a lower percentage, the regular MLB season may be relevant but it's still boring. ;) Once there's 128 teams in the dance the college hoops season will be even less relevant.

But diluting the college basketball schedule further is not going to increase the value of college hoops. There's more than enough games to televise nightly so I wouldn't expect any significant media rights increase by playing more. College football, and football in general, is what it is, a media rights monster. Hoops isn't catching up. Football teams are still just playing once a week as far as I can tell, college hoops teams twice a week on average. That's just about right.

So with an equitable competition/school balance and a dubious prospect of generating any significant incremental revenue what do the schools have to gain by extending the season.

And I didn't even try to raise a "student athlete" argument. I know better than that.
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You can overcome the dilution problem with creativity. Take the handcuffs off teams by letting them play more preseason tournaments and add a massive March Madness style tournament in November tournament. Offer serious NIL money to make it consequential.

Or just let football continue to ruin college basketball.

The question isn’t “will more games dilute the product,” it is “is there anything basketball can do to level the playing field with football?”
 
Marillac2 said:
You can overcome the dilution problem with creativity. Take the handcuffs off teams by letting them play more preseason tournaments and add a massive March Madness style tournament in November tournament. Offer serious NIL money to make it consequential.

Or just let football continue to ruin college basketball.

The question isn’t “will more games dilute the product,” it is “is there anything basketball can do to level the playing field with football?”
Click to expand...
The November tournament would be great. Take the consensus top 32 teams in the preseason rankings and have a tournament.
 
I think 40 regular season games is the right number. I do think once we creep into 50, the dilution of the game will creep in.

But there's plenty of fun ideas you can have:
  1. Move conference tournaments to mid-season. -- Instead of having conference tournaments at a time where the selection committee literally already chose 75% of the at-large field, have it in the middle of the season where they'll be weighted properly.
  2. Institute a NCAA-sponsored "rivalry month" with a streamer. -- With all of the realignment, we're missing out on a lot of great rivalries across the country. Why not have 2-4 games a week that feature these old school rivals ('cuse vs. STJ, UConn vs. BC, Mizzou vs. KU, Dayton vs. X, etc.) on a Tues and Weds night? Create a NIL prize and college football-like trophy, and make this an annual thing.
  3. Make all the preseason tournaments with NIL prizes. -- I don't think we need a 64 game tournament to start the year, but it'd be a lot more interesting if every MTE had NIL prizes for the players and programs.
  4. Revamp NIT as play-in for NCAA. -- Spoke about this before, but the best way to expand the tournament would be adding a full round of play-in games to collapse into the field of 64. Why not do this for 8-11 seeds, and have them play in awesome, traditional basketball venues across the country? Have a west regional at the Pit in New Mexico, and another at Hinkle in Indy?
 
dk423 said:
I think 40 regular season games is the right number. I do think once we creep into 50, the dilution of the game will creep in.

But there's plenty of fun ideas you can have:
  1. Move conference tournaments to mid-season. -- Instead of having conference tournaments at a time where the selection committee literally already chose 75% of the at-large field, have it in the middle of the season where they'll be weighted properly.
  2. Institute a NCAA-sponsored "rivalry month" with a streamer. -- With all of the realignment, we're missing out on a lot of great rivalries across the country. Why not have 2-4 games a week that feature these old school rivals ('cuse vs. STJ, UConn vs. BC, Mizzou vs. KU, Dayton vs. X, etc.) on a Tues and Weds night? Create a NIL prize and college football-like trophy, and make this an annual thing.
  3. Make all the preseason tournaments with NIL prizes. -- I don't think we need a 64 game tournament to start the year, but it'd be a lot more interesting if every MTE had NIL prizes for the players and programs.
  4. Revamp NIT as play-in for NCAA. -- Spoke about this before, but the best way to expand the tournament would be adding a full round of play-in games to collapse into the field of 64. Why not do this for 8-11 seeds, and have them play in awesome, traditional basketball venues across the country? Have a west regional at the Pit in New Mexico, and another at Hinkle in Indy?
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Another idea to get more games would be a state championship. How fun would it be to see St. John’s, Hofstra, Syracuse, St. Bonaventure, Iona, etc. duke it out?

The Cinderellas…it would be their Super Bowl.
 
Marillac2 said:
Another idea to get more games would be a state championship. How fun would it be to see St. John’s, Hofstra, Syracuse, St. Bonaventure, Iona, etc. duke it out?

The Cinderellas…it would be their Super Bowl.
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Love that idea. This is the issue with governing 350 schools though. How many D1 schools are in Montana? How do they try to keep everything balanced when in reality D1 hoops is comprised of such disparity amongst schools.
 
dk423 said:
I think 40 regular season games is the right number. I do think once we creep into 50, the dilution of the game will creep in.
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40 would be perfect, start season one month earlier and doesn’t interfere with Conference Tournaments and March Madness timeframe. Allow teams to participate in 2 MTE’s.
 
Marillac2 said:
Another idea to get more games would be a state championship. How fun would it be to see St. John’s, Hofstra, Syracuse, St. Bonaventure, Iona, etc. duke it out?

The Cinderellas…it would be their Super Bowl.
Click to expand...
Yeah replicating the Philly 5 tournament in NYC, or a state thing like you're saying, is another great idea. You can give the high majors triple byes or something.

Plenty of ways to fill out a schedule and keep things juicy. Unfortunately, my guess is expanding the regular season will just mean letting these gargantuan conferences have more conferences games.
 
Marillac2 said:
You can overcome the dilution problem with creativity. Take the handcuffs off teams by letting them play more preseason tournaments and add a massive March Madness style tournament in November tournament. Offer serious NIL money to make it consequential.

Or just let football continue to ruin college basketball.

The question isn’t “will more games dilute the product,” it is “is there anything basketball can do to level the playing field with football?”
Click to expand...

The answer to your last question, on a monetary basis, is no. The short season makes every game more important to serious AND casual fans and therefore attracts eyeballs in exponential numbers. Losses mean so much more. 1 in the old days, and now 2 with the expanded playoff means yer out of here. A 32 team pre season tournament still would not have the magnitude of just another game between 2 one loss teams on any given Saturday.

Also important to point out that it takes 4x the money to field a D1 football team than it does to field a D1 basketball team so the revenue difference is mostly overcome by that anyway. The travelling party size for an FBS team has to be 80+ for players, coaches and staff plus admin hangers on.

BE just looks weaker if you only look at it in gross $$$, not net $$$. PS we still need to see what the next BE TV contract looks like. Should find out by this summer.
 
Marillac2 said:
You can overcome the dilution problem with creativity. Take the handcuffs off teams by letting them play more preseason tournaments and add a massive March Madness style tournament in November tournament. Offer serious NIL money to make it consequential.

Or just let football continue to ruin college basketball.

The question isn’t “will more games dilute the product,” it is “is there anything basketball can do to level the playing field with football?”
Click to expand...
Basketball is never going to be football for the simple reason that 80-100,000 fans is greater than 8-10,000 fans. As someone pointed out earlier, what about education, only 60 players get drafted each year and with the influx of European players, less college players are getting drafted. Most college players are going to enter the real world when they are finished playing. Having them play more games to satisfy our selfish needs would be an injustice.
 
panther2 said:
Basketball is never going to be football for the simple reason that 80-100,000 fans is greater than 8-10,000 fans. As someone pointed out earlier, what about education, only 60 players get drafted each year and with the influx of European players, less college players are getting drafted. Most college players are going to enter the real world when they are finished playing. Having them play more games to satisfy our selfish needs would be an injustice.
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Amen!!
 
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