Expanded NCAA Tournament? I don't think so.

My final Miscellany News Article of the year, written just before the NCAA decided to expand the basketball tournament to only 68 teams, rather than the original plan of 96.

For a business that depends on fan viewership and attendance, the NCAA sure has little regard for their opinions.  For nearly a decade, a heavy majority of fans have supported a playoff to determine the national college football championship rather than one championship game determined by computers.  However, the NCAA has stuck to its guns, coming up with a litany of reasons, why at the moment the idea of any sort of playoffs would be impractical.

            Now, with college basketball at an all-time high in popularity, it is all but official that the NCAA will expand the current 65 team postseason field to 96, giving the top 32 teams first round byes.  While most fans want a college football playoff, just as many do not want any change to the NCAA basketball championship, much less one as drastic as the one proposed.  However, the NCAA does not care about what the people want, because they know that they can make more money playing more high-profile games.  And frankly, that is what the NCAA is: a pure for-profit machine.  Every president and board member can ramble about how they are simply looking for the best interest of the student-athletes, but that is simply naïve and downright false. 

            The only people who benefit from a 96-team tournament are the employees of the NCAA and coaches of second-tier programs.  With fifty percent more games to be played in March Madness, the NCAA can get significantly higher attendances and higher revenue from both sponsors and television deals.  Also, more coaches are likely to keep their jobs for making the tournament even if their results are exactly the same as they were previously when their respective teams did not make the Big Dance.

            This is all nice and good for the head coaches, but as a college basketball fan, I am adamantly opposed to such expansion.  One popular argument for why to have more teams in the NCAA tournament is because the percentage of Division I schools which make the basketball championship tournament is significantly less than that of D-I teams that make postseason bowls.  This reasoning is flawed on multiple levels.  First of all, right now there are three postseason college basketball tournaments that are not the NCAA tournament, which has a total of 64 more teams.  If the tournament expands, will there really be a need for the College Insider Tournament?  So it’s entirely possible that that there will be about the same number of teams playing postseason basketball when all is said and done. 

Also, in college football, only two teams have a chance to win a championship after the regular season ends, as opposed to 65 in basketball.   Further, nearly every basketball team has an opportunity to win its conference tournament to automatically gain a berth into the NCAA tournament.  So a football team such as TCU or Boise State not having a chance to win a championship despite going undefeated last year is akin to a mediocre Virginia Tech team not making the 65-team NCAA field?  According to the NCAA, Virginia Tech basketball has more of a right to the championship than TCU.  In addition, with the top 32 teams getting first round byes, there is no longer a level playing field, and the underdog upsets that the public immensely enjoys will be far less likely to occur.

In his mock bracket for next year’s projected 96-team tournament, ESPN college basketball expert Joe Lunardi had all twelve Atlantic Coast Conference teams in the field.  To put that in perspective, last season the ACC had seven teams that made the tourney, and that was relatively high for the conference.  So more big-money programs will be able to stroke their egos by flaming out in the first around against some slightly less mediocre program in a 16-17 seed matchup.  How is this supposed to be good for the tournament?  As it was, this past year, the committee had a tough time finding enough teams qualified to play in March Madness.  However, the NCAA does not care what I or any other fan thinks because they know that we will still go to games and watch them on television.  As for the interest of the student-athletes the NCAA is supposed to represent?  As Jerry Maguire said: “show me the money.” 

LeBron, the Knicks and free agency

Well, it may not be particularly relevant now that LeBron has taken his talents to South Beach, but maybe it gives some insight into what we all were thinking about NBA free agency. From the April 14, 2010 edition of the Miscellany News:

The NBA’s 2010 free agency officially begins on July 1, but that hasn’t stopped basketball fans from theorizing, conversing and generally obsessing about the most heralded free agency class of any sport in history. So significant is this year’s group of NBA free agents that teams such as the New York Knicks, Washington Wizards and Chicago Bulls have essentially thrown away several seasons just to have enough cap-space to sign one or two elite players this summer.

If you follow the NBA even casually, you know a good number of names that can change destinations this summer. Dwyane Wade, Chris Bosh, Amar’e Stoudemire, Joe Johnson and Carlos Boozer have all been all-stars for several years and all are under 30 years of age. However, one name towers above the others in importance: Cleveland Cavaliers forward LeBron James. Since coming out of high school in 2003 as one of the best prospects in the past 30 years, James has become the best player in the NBA, winning the Most Valuable Player award last year and considered a lock to repeat this year. However, it’s not just James’s talent on the court; he is extremely popular, marketable, and at the young age of 25 has a long future ahead of him.

So where will everybody wind up? Only one thing is certain: No team in the NBA will make any free agency moves of consequence until James decides his future. The favorite to land James has to be his current team, the Cavaliers, who ended the regular season with the best record in the NBA. The entire Cleveland organization has worked itself around giving LeBron as talented of a supporting cast as possible so he will have less motivation to leave, bringing in forward Antawn Jamison during the season. After losing to the Orlando Magic in the playoffs last season, the Cavaliers are the favorites to win the NBA title, and if they do, I think it is a near guarantee that James returns. Furthermore, since James currently plays for Cleveland, they have an advantage in that they can offer an extra year of a maximum deal, which would give him a higher total salary by a rather significant margin. If Cleveland does not win the title this year, James, an Ohio native, seems unlikely to leave a city that so reveres him.

However, there are definite advantages that other teams have that Cleveland does not. Take the New York Knicks, a team that has cleared enough salary next year to sign two star players. With only four players currently under contract for next year, the Knicks can allow James to choose which players he wants to play with that are available. New York is also the biggest and most marketable city, and James has always expressed a love for playing at Madison Square Garden, the Knicks’ home arena. However, he was not even in the league the last time the Knicks were a title contender, and they would not have the same talent James has in Cleveland even if they bring in someone like Wade or Bosh as well.

The Knicks, along with their competitors, are in the difficult position of not knowing whether they will be able to sign a premiere free agent, but what if James stays in Cleveland? Wade appears likely to stay in Miami, where they look to sign a big man, with Stoudemire as the prohibitive favorite. Bosh is probably leaving the Toronto Raptors, but he appears likely to sign on with more of a contender, such as Chicago or Dallas, his hometown. So a team like the Knicks would be left with the option of either signing guys like Johnson and Boozer and making themselves a definite playoff team but not among the elite, or waiting yet another year to spend their money on the 2011 free agent class. While it might be wiser to save the salary cap space if they cannot get elite talent, tremendous pressure is on these poorly performing franchises to improve their team, and in a hurry. And with there being more teams in need of a marquee free agent than there are available, July 2010 is looking to be a high-stakes poker match. Your move, LeBron. 
 

Should NCAA athletes be paid to play?

Here is an article I wrote for Vassar College's newspaper, the Miscellany News.  This is from April 28, 2010.

In the 2007-2008 academic year, the University of Texas Longhorns earned over 120 million dollars in revenue from its athletics programs. Mack Brown, the head football coach of the Longhorns, made $5.1 million in the past year. Yet all of the football and basketball players who don a Longhorns jersey during the season do not earn a penny. The NCAA has always stressed the sacredness of amateurism, that student-athletes should not get paid for what they love to do, and that they are being rewarded by the free education they receive (in the case of scholarship athletes). However, the current system that high-level college sports has in place is inherently flawed as the amateur institution it claims to be; instead, it has become a major business in which the athletes are merely a proverbial cog in the machine.

There are several options for an overhaul of the current collegiate system. First, there is the option of college athletes getting paid some percentage of revenue, which the college brings in for that particular sport. While that would accomplish compensation for major athletes, there are multiple problems with this idea. First of all, every University of Texas football player, for instance, would receive the same amount of money regardless of how valuable he is to the team. Additionally, an athlete getting paid would essentially nullify the education process. In theory, the more an athlete gets paid to participate in collegiate athletics, the more time he or she will spend working at his or her respective sport. This does not sound like an issue until one realizes that this means less time actually being a college student, both academically and socially.

Instead, if the true focus of the NCAA is to provide athletics as a supplemental part of a student’s college experience, then there should be less of a commitment for athletes. Recently, the University of Michigan football program came under fire because some players revealed that coaches exceeded the limit of mandatory hours of practice a team can enforce. This problem has happened before, and it will continue to occur unless the NCAA truly is serious about prioritizing academics first and foremost. Currently, coaches are allowed to require 20 hours of mandatory practices a week for in-season athletes in Division I sports. This does not include games, “highly recommended” workouts in which coaches sometimes observe to see who participates, and the often nation-wide travel for athletes.

How can a college athlete realistically put his or her full effort into doing well in classes if he or she is essentially working a full-time job out of it? It’s fine if the NCAA does not want to pay athletes, but if they are going to do that, make college life more of a reality for these players. To start, the NCAA should lower the number of mandatory hours student-athletes can practice. Then, athletes can properly study and participate in their classes, and also get a paying job. Many athletes who are on scholarship have financial issues at home, and it does not help them to take away time from their academic and vocational endeavors.

The NCAA has a series of commercials saying “most athletes will go pro in something other than sports.” If that is really the case, then they should allow these college students to actually have the opportunity to find their futures. One cannot stress the importance of being a student before an athlete if collegiate athletics is looked at solely based on being a business. Instead of treating athletes as pawns for the colleges and universities they attend, the NCAA should focus on providing a landscape in which student-athletes can succeed at whatever they choose to accomplish in college and beyond.