Say Goodbye to March Madness?

[gorhody]

Thorr Bjorn (@thorrbjorn) recently promoted VP of Athletics @universityofri takes a deep dive into the state of college basketball as P4 are consolidating power and dramatically impacting mid majors, @a10conference

View: https://youtu.be/BBvK0kAJKVA?si=UtVWhtvaRYpu09Gt

 

[phoenix-arizona]

Conferences and schools outside of the P4 should just branch off and start their own separate division of basketball with their own tournament and title. Let the p4 have their little super division.

 

[GMUgemini]

Conferences and schools outside of the P4 should just branch off and start their own separate division of basketball with their own tournament and title. Let the p4 have their little super division.

You know what bothers me about this whole thing? When the big clubs in Europe tried to do this, their fan bases went insane and threatened to tear the entire structure down and stopped the super league from happening.

But the alumni of these big schools are rooting for the destruction of college athletics without understanding the long-term consequences to the sports they love to follow. And double true for the schools who are in these conferences by sheer luck/history and aren’t really all that competitive now, let alone in the future when all the guardrails have disappeared.

And why am I making parallels between college athletics and European club football? Because in Europe, historically, athletics clubs were part of the community and served the community. They just happened to have a professional club at the top of the pyramid. It isn’t until the last 30 or so years that money has infiltrated their missions so much and oligarchs have gotten their hands in the pie.

 

[2011WinOverVillanova]

Conferences and schools outside of the P4 should just branch off and start their own separate division of basketball with their own tournament and title. Let the p4 have their little super division.

And you were happy with the 2025 NIT field? Because playing Samford would be as good as it would get under your scenario.

 

[GSII]

You know what bothers me about this whole thing? When the big clubs in Europe tried to do this, their fan bases went insane and threatened to tear the entire structure down and stopped the super league from happening.

But the alumni of these big schools are rooting for the destruction of college athletics without understanding the long-term consequences to the sports they love to follow. And double true for the schools who are in these conferences by sheer luck/history and aren’t really all that competitive now, let alone in the future when all the guardrails have disappeared.

And why am I making parallels between college athletics and European club football? Because in Europe, historically, athletics clubs were part of the community and served the community. They just happened to have a professional club at the top of the pyramid. It isn’t until the last 30 or so years that money has infiltrated their missions so much and oligarchs have gotten their hands in the pie.

One important point in Euro Club Football is promotion and relegation. The American Greed does not want this. They want to protect their investment and have a monopoly. Im all for it in College Athletics but cant begin to think about how its structured. I guess each conf changes to a divsion?

 

[GMUgemini]

It would be a huge logistical nightmare for college athletics. The biggest thing about promotion and relegation is that every team plays every other team twice, home and away, so they have a completely balanced schedule. I don’t know how you do that especially in football.

But you could do a “two seasons” approach where the top two teams in each conference move on to the promotion tournament (or national championship if you are at the highest level) and the bottom two teams move on to the relegation tournament. In basketball that could just be your NCAA tournament and NIT respectively.

But if you’re going to do that you’d have to eliminate the OOC and every conference would have to have a completely balanced schedule.

I also can’t ever imagine this happening because the P4 would never elect to exposure their bottom feeders to relegation or allow in schools they deem as unworthy into their ranks. You’d also have to split up into something like 7 or 8 divisions so Boston College isn’t fighting relegation against NCA&T or something.

Oh, and I would prefer groups and round robin first round for promotion rather than single elimination. Give every team 3 games to make their case before bowing out.

And then for relegation a shortened season where everyone plays home and home and the bottom X teams go down, every else stays up.

Edit: maybe split D1 into three tiers, 8 conferences each. And then maybe you could do top 3/bottom 3 and so 24 teams for each “clausura” — to steal Liga MX’s name.