Published March 1, 2011 - 6:37pm
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I’m a big sports fan and a big basketball fan, but this year and in recent years, college basketball is miserably failing to fill the void left by the end of the college football season. Here’s why…
This Saturday, March 5th, Duke will square off against UNC. Both are great teams historically and currently. It’s a matchup that will likely be for the regular season ACC Championship. It will be watched by many college basketball fans.
There’s just one problem: it’s completely meaningless.
It really doesn’t matter who wins the game. The next week, the two teams will then battle in the ACC tournament and may play each other again. This is still sort of meaningless, but at least you can win a conference title (something that really nobody cares about in basketball either).
All that matters is that both of these two teams are in the field of 68 for the NCAA tournament. And of course they both will be in the field.
And there you have the biggest problem with college basketball and a huge reason why college football should avoid at any costs pursuing a similar course. It’s such a worthless regular season, where college football is anything but.
It’s essentially the equivalent of the Iron Bowl at the end of the year between Alabama and Auburn. Then having the same two teams meet again in a playoff a couple weeks later. You would drop the intensity of the Iron Bowl dramatically, even if the fans indeed hate each other.
The UNC / Duke rivalry has intense fans, but again, the game is meaningless because of the structure of the NCAA basketball postseason.
Keep this in mind all you BCS haters.
Haha! Nice piece of satire. Similiar to how every other sport in NCAA has meaningless regular seasons, too, because of the playoffs. Of course, that goes for all professional sports, too. NBA, NFL…Completely meaningless regular seasons. That’s why no one cares about them. Yeah, some people get a little excited about some regular season games, but the playoffs make them all meaningless. Too bad only the BCS committee has figured this out.
Interestingly, many of the conversations you hear regarding many of the pro sports is contraction. Not enough demand when you factor in number of teams + length of season, maybe?
Didn’t you know, Jimmer Fredette is the equivalent of Cam Newton in basketball, minus of course the “icon” status and some pay-for-play allegations.