|
Post by johnnysnowplow on Aug 8, 2014 13:20:05 GMT -5
|
|
|
Post by hoyasaxa2003 on Aug 8, 2014 17:51:54 GMT -5
Disagree MCI. It always boils down to money and who controls it. With a tv contract of close to a billion dollars, why wouldn't the P5 ( down the road ) start their own post season tourney? Do people want to see the Davidsons and GC? Sure. But more folks want to watch Uk, Ku and UNC. Winter is coming. A Big 5 tournament is simply not worth as much as the current NCAA tournament. Would it be worth a lot? Yes, definitely, but not as valuable as the current property. The brilliance of the current NCAA tournament is that it gets millions of people to watch who otherwise rarely watch a basketball game. Sure, some may watch simply to appreciate good basketball, but it's the drama and stories that draw in viewers who otherwise do not care about college basketball. The ratings of any single NCAA game, even those featuring top teams, generally are not as high was one would think. Thus, good basketball alone isn't enough to draw in all the viewers that currently watch the tournament. Don't get me wrong - if the Big 5 left the NCAA tournament it would fall apart, and whatever Big 5 equivalent replaced it would get plenty of viewership and attention, but it simply would not be the same as the current tournament format. It's also unclear what format a Big 5 tournament would have. There are currently 65 "Big 5" schools, and last year 23 of them weren't even among the top 75 programs nationally.
|
|
MCIGuy
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
Anyone here? What am I supposed to update?
Posts: 9,423
|
Post by MCIGuy on Aug 8, 2014 19:25:50 GMT -5
Disagree MCI. It always boils down to money and who controls it. With a tv contract of close to a billion dollars, why wouldn't the P5 ( down the road ) start their own post season tourney? Do people want to see the Davidsons and GC? Sure. But more folks want to watch Uk, Ku and UNC. Winter is coming. They're getting UK, KU and UNC in the final rounds of the tourney now so why would it matter? Has Davidson won a championship yet? At the rate the books are written I don't think winter is ever coming actually.
|
|
GUMBA
Silver Hoya (over 500 posts)
Posts: 737
|
Post by GUMBA on Aug 8, 2014 22:06:33 GMT -5
Kill the Cinderella story line and you kill the tournament. It would be a terrible mistake for the Big 5 to assume the TV contract and public interest would remain the same over time.
|
|
|
Post by happyhoya1979 on Aug 9, 2014 12:51:00 GMT -5
The Cinderella story is already dead. Nobody believes that Butler, Indiana St., Gonzaga or VCU is ever actually going to win a championship. The tournament gets a lot less mileage out of the the one or two teams who make sweet 16 than anybody thinks. People really want to see the royalty programs (Kentucky, UNC, UCLA. Florida, Georgetown in a past life etc.)play. There would be no greater disaster for ratings than an actual Florida Gulf Coast-Gonzaga National Championship game. No school that is not BIG 5 has won the thing since UNLV in 1990 and no non-division 1 football unversity has won it since Villanoza in 1985 (which was only possible in my view because they were beating us).
|
|
Bigs"R"Us
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
Posts: 6,642
|
Post by Bigs"R"Us on Aug 9, 2014 13:25:37 GMT -5
The NCAA Championship crowns a college basketball champion. The Big 5 Championship would not. There will be years when the number 1 ranked team is not from the Big 5.
|
|
hoyainspirit
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
When life puts that voodoo on me, music is my gris-gris.
Posts: 8,392
|
Post by hoyainspirit on Aug 9, 2014 19:01:13 GMT -5
The NCAA tourney, I believe, is too big and popular for the P5 to screw it up.
|
|
|
Post by vamosalaplaya on Aug 9, 2014 19:18:17 GMT -5
I am not real hopeful of where this is going. The general trend of the last 30 years has been the big football schools raise the cost of running a college athletics program for everyone else, and then, in a cycle that is no different than any other large, monopolistic organization, comes up with new ways to spend all the new money they are generating.
It's not out of the question they figure out they can make more money from staging their stand alone basketball tournament as opposed to sharing money with smaller schools that they cut out on their own.
The issues of stipends for scholarship athletes, and payments for their likenesses, are legitimate. But the answer of every trend from the big football schools is to build a bigger oven that burns more money and require everyone else to do the same.
The only silver lining might be that the cost of college education is coming under such a microscope that spending money on athletes may start to come up for question as a priority, and ease the pressure down the line for schools that have to follow the lead of these guys to compete.
Football, let's face it, causes brain damage. One day folks may look back on it similar to failing to wear seat belts or smoking while pregnant. But now that the big conferences have broken off, the future of the sport that is driving this is less important than the fact that now these large state institutions with big alumni bases and taxpayer subsidies are setting the rules -
|
|
Locker
Golden Hoya (over 1000 posts)
Posts: 1,265
|
Post by Locker on Aug 9, 2014 20:13:36 GMT -5
Yeah, count me among those who think we are cheerfully rushing into a dystopian future for college hoops and athletics. The lawyers and the courts and the power football schools are going to radically remake college sports, and nobody knows if fans and alumni will end up liking the result. If you make college basketball more like minor league baseball or the D League, will we still love it? Probably?
|
|
|
Post by hoyasaxa2003 on Aug 9, 2014 22:04:27 GMT -5
The Cinderella story is already dead. Nobody believes that Butler, Indiana St., Gonzaga or VCU is ever actually going to win a championship. The tournament gets a lot less mileage out of the the one or two teams who make sweet 16 than anybody thinks. People really want to see the royalty programs (Kentucky, UNC, UCLA. Florida, Georgetown in a past life etc.)play. There would be no greater disaster for ratings than an actual Florida Gulf Coast-Gonzaga National Championship game. No school that is not BIG 5 has won the thing since UNLV in 1990 and no non-division 1 football unversity has won it since Villanoza in 1985 (which was only possible in my view because they were beating us). Connecticut is not Big 5 and won last year. Watching any NCAA coverage at all illustrates that this simply is not true. The "Cinderella" stories are alive and well. These schools might not win the NCAA championship, but they get plenty of mileage through the Sweet 16, Elite 8, or Final Four. Also, the fact that a school like VCU or Butler made the Final Four shows that it's certainly possible one of those schools could win. I do not consider a school like Gonzaga to necessarily be a Cinderella story (if they had one last year, they certainly would not have been). I'm talking more about VCU coming out of nowhere to get to the Final Four, or Cornell making the Sweet 16 a few years ago. The reason the Big 5 type schools win most years is because generally, they contain most of the consistently elite programs. And yes, that happens partially because of the fact that they earn more money, they can get good coaches, and they generally have a fairly high athletic profile. How many truly elite or top level programs exist outside the Big 5? There are definitely some, but I would say no more than 10-15 tops (again, I am talking about consistent NCAA teams outside the Big 5). The thing is, basketball fans might want to see the top teams, but part of the buzz around the tournament consists of filling out the brackets, and picking the "upsets." In other words, much of that hinges on people paying attention to college basketball who ignore it the rest of the year. If you had a tournament with all the Big 5 schools that drama would be much diminished because you'd basically have all the elite schools, and everybody else who is not elite. Sure, there would be an element of underdogs there, too, but nothing like the current tournament landscape. Long term, anything can happen, and the Big 5 might split from the NCAA tournament. Short term, with media contracts well into the 2020s and no real desire by anybody to eliminate the NCAA tournament, I do not think much will change.
|
|
|
Post by happyhoya1979 on Aug 10, 2014 7:17:07 GMT -5
There won't be a top 200 recruit in the country that will be playing for a non Big 5 school inside of 5 years. The champion will always legitimately (based on talent) come from that group. Connecticut's winnng class last year was recruited when it was still in a top conference.
|
|
SaxaCD
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 4,401
|
Post by SaxaCD on Aug 10, 2014 7:33:00 GMT -5
There won't be a top 200 recruit in the country that will be playing for a non Big 5 school inside of 5 years. The champion will always legitimately (based on talent) come from that group. Connecticut's winnng class last year was recruited when it was still in a top conference. Yes, there will be. Football does not equal basketball. Never will.
|
|
|
Post by matersammich on Aug 10, 2014 11:36:19 GMT -5
[quote author=" happyhoya1979" source="/post/596971/thread" timestamp="1407673027" ]There won't be a top 200 recruit in the country that will be playing for a non Big 5 school inside of 5 years. The champion will always legitimately (based on talent) come from that group. Connecticut's winnng class last year was recruited when it was still in a top conference. [/quote] This is crazy talk. Everyone will be able to abide by the rules the power 5 come up with and there will always be a draw for the Big East as a basketball only conference.
|
|
|
Post by bicentennial on Aug 10, 2014 12:13:11 GMT -5
As long as Fox or other networks see value in competing with ESPN for sports content, there will be a value in a non big 5 basketball conference. The only question is will that money approach the value ESPN places on even mediocre SEC basketball teams. As long as that dollar figure is close, the Big East, Atlantic 10 and other strong basketball leagues without big time football will remain relevant even if they have to pay players a significant additional stipend. 13 basketball scholarships plus stipends is a very small amount in relative terms. It also remains to be seen if basketball will do better in the wake of the first O'Bannon decision and regardless of how the Northwestern Unionization case concludes (after all appeals.) The Big 5 may yet regret singling themselves out in football if class actions from brain damaged concussed players become the norm. In most states, class actions against a group of companies (even non profits) continue to be paid out until every corporation is bankrupt or all suits have concluded/been settled. It will also be interesting to see if a federal judge in a non Big 5 state would allow a formerly beloved college star to ask for triple damages for conspiracy. The structure of the NCAA makes such conspiracy unlikely but the Big 5 structure is very different and is clearly motivated by the profitability of football. Yes RICO actions for triple damages are usually a pipe dream yet this is the type of high publicity case where it could come up.
|
|
|
Post by vamosalaplaya on Aug 10, 2014 12:37:31 GMT -5
If the non Big 5 schools can match the new rules for their athletes, in the short term things should be fine even as I think this could have a bad ending over the next decade.
There is a lot that isn't clear; let's say the Big 5 starts offering stipends to all scholarship athletes; can non-schools create rules that allow them to only offer stipends in men's and women's basketball? Can they selectively match?
The amount of resources that get poured into non-revenue sports by the Big 5 is very high and that is part of the "oven that burns money" part of things; the massive facility upgrades for the football programs inevitably flows to all the teams even if on a smaller level. That doesn't need to happen at a non Big 5 school.
Given the massive cost of college education, throwing an extra few grand a year for stipends at a student who already has earned free tuition, room and board to play, say, soccer, tennis, volleyball, lacrosse - or fill in the blank non-revenue scholarship sport - - or even if they just got a big partial scholarship - when there are parents struggling to pay up to $60,000 a year to attend the school for kids who are outstanding at non-sports - that's going to raise some hackles.
So a silver lining in the distance might be that when the high profile issues of images on video games and truly needy athletes needing extra cash settles down, this trend towards spending more money subsidizing athletes may subside. That could at least reduce some of the increases or hard choices associated with running a D 1 sports program.
But the Big 5 could still decide to pull up and start their own hoops tournament. They will need the extra money for (fill in the blank) related to running their ever-bigger athletic departments. I don't disagree with the idea the NCAA tournament is popular because of it's Cinderella first 2-3 rounds, but if they can double the money - or whatever - by not sharing with smaller conferences, they could very well decide to do that. Simply look at all the nonsense that has gone on with realignment - ruined regional rivalries, increased travel time and expense for all athletes, reduction in the numbers of teams fielded even as TV revenue explodes - none of that made any sense either.
|
|
SFHoya99
Blue & Gray (over 10,000 posts)
Posts: 17,737
Member is Online
|
Post by SFHoya99 on Aug 10, 2014 13:25:16 GMT -5
The Cinderella story is already dead. Nobody believes that Butler, Indiana St., Gonzaga or VCU is ever actually going to win a championship. The tournament gets a lot less mileage out of the the one or two teams who make sweet 16 than anybody thinks. People really want to see the royalty programs (Kentucky, UNC, UCLA. Florida, Georgetown in a past life etc.)play. There would be no greater disaster for ratings than an actual Florida Gulf Coast-Gonzaga National Championship game. No school that is not BIG 5 has won the thing since UNLV in 1990 and no non-division 1 football unversity has won it since Villanoza in 1985 (which was only possible in my view because they were beating us). Butler was literally one basket away from winning it all like four years ago. Ahhh, so much has changed. Or maybe the mystical energies of footballness rimmed out just enough shots.
|
|
hoyainspirit
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
When life puts that voodoo on me, music is my gris-gris.
Posts: 8,392
|
Post by hoyainspirit on Aug 11, 2014 8:48:55 GMT -5
|
|
Cambridge
Platinum Hoya (over 5000 posts)
Canes Pugnaces
Posts: 5,301
|
Post by Cambridge on Aug 11, 2014 9:18:51 GMT -5
The Cinderella story is already dead. Nobody believes that Butler, Indiana St., Gonzaga or VCU is ever actually going to win a championship. The tournament gets a lot less mileage out of the the one or two teams who make sweet 16 than anybody thinks. People really want to see the royalty programs (Kentucky, UNC, UCLA. Florida, Georgetown in a past life etc.)play. There would be no greater disaster for ratings than an actual Florida Gulf Coast-Gonzaga National Championship game. No school that is not BIG 5 has won the thing since UNLV in 1990 and no non-division 1 football unversity has won it since Villanoza in 1985 (which was only possible in my view because they were beating us). Not to nitpick, but you're being generous to UConn football. They were not yet D1 when the Huskies won their first title in 1999 and you could even argue that they were barely D1-level at the time of their second title in 2004 - since that was only their first season in Big East football. Also, I mean, Butler went to the finals two years in a row, I don't think it was outrageous at the time of tip off to believe that they had a legitimate shot to win a title.
|
|
|
Post by hoyasaxa2003 on Aug 11, 2014 10:32:48 GMT -5
Since 1990, the following schools have won the NCAA Championship: UNLV, Duke (4), UNC (3), Arkansas, UCLA, Kentucky (3), Arizona, Connecticut (4), Michigan State, Maryland, Syracuse, Florida (2), Kansas, Louisville. So in 25 tournaments, 5 schools have won 16. That means that only 5 schools have won over 60% of the tournaments in the last 25 years.
It's not that the Big 5 schools always win the NCAA tournament, and nobody else can compete. Rather, there are maybe 10-15 "bluebood" programs (or whatever term you want to use) that win a lot more than everybody else. It's true that they are all in the Big 5 conferences (except Connecticut), but I think it's more reflective of their basketball tradition than anything else.
It might be true that it's an uphill climb for the non-Big 5 conference schools to win the NCAA tournament, but it's also almost as difficult for the other 40 or so Big 5 schools that have not won in the last 25 years.
|
|
IDenj
Diamond Hoya (over 2500 posts)
Posts: 2,526
|
Post by IDenj on Aug 11, 2014 12:30:49 GMT -5
Nobody knows where this is going to end up. I just fear that with an ever changing landscape P5 will do what's in their best financial interests. And that doesn't include Georgetown.
|
|