Mark Bradley: College basketball stinks

I put it on the Journalism board not only to generate discussion about whether he's right, but to ask: Understanding that it's a blog -- and a blog post can be of infinite length -- is the case well enough made?

http://www.ajc.com/weblogs/mark-bradley/2013/jan/28/college-hoops-great-sport-has-gone-sour/

 

College basketball very well may stink, but I don't think low-scoring games or "brand-name teams" losing proves the point.

 

What killed college basketball was too many marquee players leaving early. That meant that every season is starting with basically a bunch of unknowns and you aren't able to build continuity.

 

I would agree with that. Compare to College Football where you see marquee players for at least 3 years before they head off the The NFL.

I also think that the 3 pt shot has hurt college basketball. It has become too much of a perimeter game. I would like to see a rule that does not allow the 3 pt shot till that last 2 minutes.

 

I think it's interesting to compare college football to college basketball.

College football has a great regular season, but probably the worst postseason in any sport.

College basketball is kind of a joke during the regular season (especially before conference play). There are a few exceptions, emphasis on "a few". But it has one of the best postseasons around, even though they keep fucking with it.

The positive that has come out of all of the players who went straight to the NBA for several years and now are usually one and done has been the emergence of the mid-majors as true national threats. I think it's made the tournament more interesting, especially when you're seeing teams like VCU, Butler, Gonzaga become true threats in the tournament.

I don't know if that happens if players had to stay three years (like in football). Although, if that happened, you would see a crazy level of competition among the top schools and the sport would be better because the players would be more recognizable, like they were in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

 

I agree with Boom that the current generation of players is too focused on the 3-point shot or dunks and woefully lacking in fundamentals. We miss John Wooden, a great teacher of the game.

I think another thing that hurt the sport was oversaturation on television. In my market, you can see more than 40 games per week with basic cable. Who can keep up with all of that? There are too many teams, too many names to learn, too many coaches changing teams too often. It all adds up to a lack of continuity for anyone other than those who follow it as a full-time job.

As for the tournament, part of what gave the tournament it's appeal in the 1980s was the occasional Cinderella team upsetting the established powerhouse. Teams like Butler, VCU or Gonzaga were supposed to cherish their one shining moment ... and then quietly go away. If you keep doing it over and over again, pretty soon YOU become the Goliath and not the David. With talent so spread out, the smaller conference schools became more competitive, so the upsets were nowhere near as memorable as they were in the old days.

 

Would you make the trade?

Your point is excellent, but it's impossible to have it both ways. If you had a full-fledged tournament for football and let everyone in, that Alabama-Michigan game in September isn't going to generate nearly as much interest. Likewise, the regular season for basketball meant much more back in the day before the tournament field got to be too large.

 

I don't really even like the tournament anymore. If I didn't have a bracket, I wouldn't watch at all.

Could just be me getting older. But also college basketball makes the ultimate mockery of the "college" part. And I've come around to hoping the Caliparis and Calhouns win every year just to point that up.

 

I view the entire college football season as a tournament as it's set up now and that's a good thing. It's almost one and done.

 

Neither would a lot of people, I suspect.

 

SEC basketball stinks to high heaven but I note that Bradley fails to call out his bread and butter.

The larger point of one and dones hurting big-name programs has been written over and over. Bradley doesn't exactly hoe new ground here.

What would have been more interesting to write is does NCAA basketball need the old powerhouses to be strong contenders when you have the mid-majors like Gonzaga and Bradley that have become the new powerhouses.

Neither of those teams will be No. 1 seeds because of the inherent biases of the selection committee and that would have also been more interesting.

Also more interesting, does the SEC even need to bother with putting out good basketball teams given the money that flows in from football?

 

Of course college basketball is worse now than when more elite-level players stayed two, three and four years. This isn't rocket science or a new argument.

Also, I can't stand degrading your audience. The entire premise is doing that, as people who want to read about college basketball probably like college basketball. But this line struck a nerve: "just try naming 10 big-time college players." OK: Cody Zeller, Ben McLemore, Trey Burke, Deshaun Thomas, Kenny Boynton, Rotnei Clarke, Russ Smith, Shabazz Muhammad, Doug McDermott, Michael Carter-Williams and Isaiah Canaan. Was that supposed to be hard? If you can't reel off those 10 and 10 more, you're not in position to tell me college basketball sucks, Mark Bradley.