Postscripts: Let’s Not Screw Up March Madness
What’s going on in the Big 12 and beyond? I expand and explain every Sunday in Postscripts at Heartland College Sports, your home for independent Big 12 coverage.
This week, it’s all about March, as in Madness.
Could We Please Not Screw Up March Madness?
It hasn’t been the best week for me personally. I’ve been laid up for the latter part of the week with a head cold. I’m sure that’s all my work travel in February (I have a day job believe it or not) and March (to KC for the Big 12 Tournament) catching up with me.
The only upside is that I’ve done nothing but lay in bed for three days with two laptops — one to write with and one to watch March Madness with. I’d rather be watching it on my huge television, but at least there are no distractions. Maybe Sunday I get out of bed.
This tournament led me back to something that I wrote about last week, which was the future of March Madness.
ESPN wrote a large piece about it last week when I was in Kansas City. It was expansive, but the part that caught everyone’s eye were the comments of SEC commissioner Greg Sankey. You’ll note I used this tweet last week.
As I wrote last week, expansion won’t be about the little guy. It will be about money and be about expanding berths for power conferences.
Since I wrote that piece last Sunday several teams, including Oklahoma, turned down berths in the NIT. Most of the were high-major programs. It was a slap in the face to the NIT — which is owned by the NCAA. The NIT changed its selection procedure earlier this season to help make the tournament more high-major friendly.
To change it, the NIT took away the guaranteed bids to regular-season champions that don’t win their conference tournaments. Meaning, they took bids away from mid-major and low-major conferences.
Then, Michigan State coach Tom Izzo had some stuff to say about the future of the NCAA Tournament as it relates to mid-major programs.
“While everybody likes the upsets in the first round I’m not sure if that’s true as it goes on,” Izzo said.
SERIOUSLY?!
Utterly myopic.
Did y’all hate it when Saint Peter’s got all the way to the Elite Eight two years ago? Well, I mean, Kentucky, Murray State and Purdue probably weren’t thrilled with it — those were the teams the Peacocks beat along the way. But damn near everyone else enjoyed it.
What about George Mason making it all the way to the Final Four in 2006? By the way, the Patriots got in as an at-large team after losing its conference tournament.
What about the FGCU ‘Dunk City’ team in 2013 that got to the Sweet 16? How about Loyola Chicago’s magical Final Four run under Oklahoma’s Porter Moser in 2018? I saw the Ramblers’ first two NCAA Tournament wins that year in Dallas. You could have powered downtown off the energy from those games.
Also that year? The UMBC Retrievers becoming the first No. 16 seed to beat a No. 1 seed, defeating Virginia.
Not to mention FAU reached the Final Four as a No. 9 seed. I mean, mid-majors are getting a lot done in this tournament, whether you like it or not.
We remember who wins the title. But we also remember ALL of these incredible Cinderella runs. They create the ‘One Shining Moment’ that we all stick around for after the trophy ceremony each April.
Oakland University is five miles from my mom’s house in Rochester, Mich. That’s the only reason I know it exists. But all of you know it exists after the Golden Grizzlies beat Kentucky in the first round on Thursday.
After the win, the University’s merchandise site crashed. Their coach, Greg Kampe, told reporters that more than $6,000 worth of T-shirts were purchased by buyers with Louisville, Ky., area codes, no doubt bought to troll the Wildcats the next time they meet.
When trollers on Twitter wrote that Oakland’s top shooter, Jack Gohlke, would be selling insurance while Kentucky’s players would be in the NBA, his teammates started singing the State Farm jingle.
How can you not love this?
My alma mater, Stephen F. Austin, was awful in men’s basketball while I was in school in the 1990s. So, when the Lumberjacks FINALLY won their first NCAA Tournament game in 2014 over VCU, we were beside ourselves. The following morning our photo was on the home page on ESPN’s web site. I still have that screenshot.
The new marketing company our school was working with tried to convince us after that win that the exposure was fleeting and wasn’t worth much. Spoken by those that don’t understand the power of this tournament.
In a way, we blundered into this brilliance. The first NCAA Tournament in 1939 featured eight teams and Oregon won the event in, of all places, Evanston, Ill. Heck, Oregon wasn’t even the Ducks back then. They were the Webfoots. Back then, the aforementioned NIT was in New York’s Madison Square Garden and that was THE postseason tournament everyone wanted to be invited to.
The NCAA Tournament has evolved into something utterly unique and special and glorious. We can’t screw it up.
I’m not sure how we keep it from happening. Expansion almost seems inevitable. Our site owner, Pete Mundo, and I talked about it on our pre-NCAA Tournament podcast. I’m OK with a little expansion, as long as we don’t take away the automatic bids for each conference. I think that would be a huge mistake.
ESPN’s Fran Fraschilla agrees. He took to social media this weekend with a modest proposal.
I second the motion. All in favor?
After watching what Oakland did this weekend, how can you not be in favor?
You can find Matthew Postins on Twitter @PostinsPostcard.
