Tank's Take April 4, 2003

How To Fix College Basketball

The glory days of NCAA Basketball are clearly gone. Weather it is from disenchantment from numerous scandals, or the number of players who do not graduate and leave college early for the NBA draft, College basketball is hurting on many levels. The number of players leaving school early probably has to be fixed by the NBA, and chances are even their hands will be tied since a rule prohibiting players from leaving early can be easily defeated in court.

Though the lack of any star players dose not hurt the NCAA Tournament that badly, it has destroyed the regular season. The NCAA Tournament and Conference Tournaments have turned College Basketball into a postseason sport. That too can't be changed. However steps can be taken to make the regular season mean something while making the Tournament even better.

Under the current rules the 32 Conference Champions are awarded automatic bids, while the rest of the field is rounded out by 33 at large teams. A few years ago a play game was introduced as more conferences were established for automatic bids. That in my view was a mistake. That play in game almost makes the loser feel like they were not apart of the tournament at all even though they earned it by inning their conference tournament. I think taking away 1 at large team can do the NCAA Tournament a bit of good.

The 32 conference champions weather they win their conference tournament or as in the case of the Ivy League win the regular season should not be touched. That system works fine. However, the at large team end up creating allot of controversy, as there often is a bias to the major conferences while the mid major conferences are overlooked. This often includes several teams that have finished below .500 in conference play. You can fix both problems as well as adding value to the regular season by making a rule that no team can receive an at large bid with a losing record in conference play.

It is ridiculous that a team like Auburn even though they did make the Sweet 16 made the tournament over a team like Seton Hall and Boston College. The NCAA needs the regular season to mean something. A team coming from the bottom of the conference to win it's tournament and earning an automatic bid is one thing, but when you reward a team that could not achieve a .500 record in their own conference you cheapen the regular season's most important games. College Basketball should design its regular season around conference play, since winning the conference tournament means an automatic bid, while finishing first in the regular season guarantees an at large.

Eliminating teams with losing conference records will open more spots for the mid majors that are the true story of the early rounds of the tournament and eliminates some of the controversy that crops up every year after the tournament seeding and bracketing is announced.

A second step that the NCAA should take to improve the regular season involves the conference tournaments. Most of the major conferences like the Big XII, and SEC have more the 8 teams. While some of these conferences like the Big East and Big Ten eliminate the last place teams from the tournament bigger steps should be taken by the conferences. Simply put Conference Tournaments should only include the top 8 teams in their conferences. This will give added importance to the regular season and will create a February scramble similar to that in the NBA for the final playoff spots.

Imagine if you would a Conference like the Big XII which was clearly the strongest in the country this year with 2 teams in the Final 4 and 2 teams earning number 1 seeds. Overall the Big XII also had 6 teams make the tournament. Imagine how competitive a conference must be to have half of their teams in the Big Dance. So picture if you will a scramble to get into the Conference Tournament itself it will actually bring some interest to the NCAA earlier then March by having the tournament start for some teams in February.

The Conference Tournaments should keep their level of importance in fact a way to make them even more important will be to make a rule that teams that lose in their conference tournament will not get the number 1 seed. This will prevent situations like Arizona who knew they had the top seed in the west, and played half-heartedly in the Pac -10 tournament losing in the first round.

IF you make every game more important you bring the level of play up, and you give people reason to watch the NCAA not just during March Madness, but the entire season. Although the golden age of college hoops is gone a new age of competitive hard fought regular season battles can begin, and help launch a new age where the players on the college hardwood are household names again