Today, in settling it on the field

Because you never know when your potential national champion is out there lurking as the seventieth-best regular season team.

On the other hand, there’s always a bigger March Madness check.

You guys can keep pretending all you want about why postseasons don’t expand.  I’ll keep watching the money, thanks.

20 Comments

Filed under It's Just Bidness, The NCAA

20 responses to “Today, in settling it on the field

  1. I can agree with widening the lane and moving the 3 point line back. Tournament expansion is nothing more than coach job security and more performance bonus payouts for coaching staffs.

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  2. Hogbody Spradlin

    It’s especially embarrassing to be in the ACC and miss the tournament, so they can either coach better or make the tournament bigger. And . . . voila!

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  3. ChiliDawg

    Pretty soon March Madness is going to take on an entirely different meaning.

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  4. PTC DAWG

    Comparing D1 Basketball to FBS football is futile.

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    • Same folks run both sports, so it would appear to be illuminating with regard to their mindset.

      And remember that 72 is small potatoes compared with the Delany-led attempt a few years ago to take the field to 96.

      If you don’t like basketball comparisons, go take a look at the size of the 1-AA playoff field some time.

      Liked by 1 person

      • PTC DAWG

        TV doesn’t want a watered FBS playoff system…they have a good thing now. JMHO…..YMMV.

        And as far as FCS? Got any TV numbers? Don’t they play all games on Campus until the Final? Again, apples to oranges.

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        • ChiliDawg

          *TV doesn’t want a watered FBS playoff system…they have a good thing now.”

          If one thing is true in media – it’s that you can never have too much of a good thing. If they think another round of playoffs would make them more money, they are for it. And I’m not aware of any numbers that would indicate they are wrong, either.

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    • Uglydawg

      It is, but comparing the root desire to expand is a telling exercise in exposing the obvious. The strongest force behind expansion of March Madness and the CF championship playoffs is driven by the same lust for mo’, mo’, mo’, mo’, mo’ money.
      Meanwhile, a kid can’t make a dime off of his expanded work.
      This is a swamp that is growing.

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    • ASEF

      Only because the FBS P5 commissioners look at D1 basketball as a cautionary tale of letting the have-nots dilute the product so substantially that it barely registers in media rights talks outside of the post-season.

      We’ll never see the NCAA run FBS’ post-season. And we’ll never see a UCF or something like it in the playoffs. Notice that Texas dropped a UCF game in 2021 or something like that? Replaced them with Alabama. That game is going to get months of coverage. The mere scheduling of it got headlines.

      Meanwhile, one of the best college basketball games I have ever seen was 2012 Kentucky-UNC at Rupp in December. Might have gotten a few hundred mentions on Twitter that day.

      My hope: Delany, Sankey, Swofford, Scott and Bowlsby understand that the value of their conferences is primarily driven by their flagship football programs. That’s their primary economic engine. And playoff expansion directly dilutes those brands in several ways.

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      • PTC DAWG

        Correct, the same group doesn’t run March Madness and the College Football Playoffs…glad some of us are paying attention.

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        • LMAO. You think Mark Emmert sits down with the networks to negotiate broadcast deals?

          Here’s the way it goes in the real world:

          Division I schools — most notably their presidents — appear to be warming to a proposal to expand the NCAA men’s basketball tournament.

          Support has grown to the point that Big Ten Conference Commissioner Jim Delany, a former chairman of the committee that oversees the tournament and a critic of large-scale expansion, sees a move from 65 to 96 teams as likely, he said Tuesday.

          “I said from Day 1 that I would support the decision that came out of the (NCAA’s) Board of Directors, which ostensibly is linked back to the presidents (in) the conferences,” Delany said.

          The only difference between the two tourneys is that the NCAA itself doesn’t get a cut of the football money.

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          • ASEF

            And that’s the key. Playoffs will expand – when the commissioners reasonably believe that would make more money for the P5 than the current set up.

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  5. Speaking of money, listened to an interview with Mr. Conventional Wisdom this morning. Said that with the SEC network, Slive grew revenues from 20mil to 40 mil, and in the same breath he said it wasn’t about the money. The cognitive dissonance is just outright outstanding for those toting the conference line. Hats off to you fellas. Most of your overblown salaries must come hand in hand with the ability to talk with a straight face. slow clap

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  6. ApalachDawg

    They should organize college basketball like English soccer
    Each league would have its own tourney and season with a championship
    In addition they play a FA cup type tourney where every D1 team would play. The lower teams would play the first xx amount of rounds til the next group of big boys would join the tourney and then start to play any lower teams that made and this would keep going until you got to the top level big boys would join like UNC, Mich St, UCLA etc. then you get to your final 64 or 32 and that forms your March madness.
    Could be kind of cool

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  7. AusDawg85

    What is this basketball you speak of?

    Liked by 1 person

  8. Otto

    Once the regular season is meaningless you may as well make the tournament as big as possible.

    Liked by 1 person