Spring Break
Stop the madness, bring on the bowls
Kevin Duffy
Issue date: 1/27/09 Section: Sports
Bowl season has long since passed, but I'd be doing this campus an injustice if I didn't address an issue that has been the center of controversy for a few years now: Bowls vs. Playoffs.
Quite frankly, I shouldn't even have to write this column. There shouldn't be a debate. The fact that the NCAA continues to employ this system to decide its champion is completely absurd. How many more columns have to be written? How many more coaches have to publicly trash the current system before the NCAA makes some kind of change?
Unfortunately, the answers to those two questions don't matter much. The current postseason system generates money, and in the end, the NCAA is interested in maximizing its profit - not maximizing the fairness of the game or the level of entertainment it creates.
I'm sure no one important will read this, and if they do, I'm sure they'll take it as a joke. But I think I speak for everyone when I say, "If I have to sit through one more lopsided postseason snoozer, I'm going to go insane."
So here's my proposal: Ditch the monstrosity that we call the NCAA Tournament and institute the Bowl system for college basketball.
Anyone who's played sports before knows that single-elimination tournaments don't decide true champions; computers do. Bowl season is truly the greatest time of the year for sports fans. The only "madness" that occurs in March is the bizarre manner that college basketball conducts its postseason.
There's the anti-climatic first round, which is chock-full of blowouts and easily the least exciting sports day on the calendar. Then, there are teams (San Diego, for example) that have no business playing on the same court as higher-seeded programs that have showed consistency all year (I don't know, say UConn).
And then there's the Final Four. Supposed to be the four best teams right? Not when undeserving squads (say, George Mason) somehow find themselves in a category that should reserved for teams that actually earned it (like UConn). For the sake of athletes who invest their lives in basketball (and obsessive fans), let's stop the madness in March and institute a Bowl season. I'll even give the NCAA "Tournament" Committee a head start with some Bowl projections:
Quite frankly, I shouldn't even have to write this column. There shouldn't be a debate. The fact that the NCAA continues to employ this system to decide its champion is completely absurd. How many more columns have to be written? How many more coaches have to publicly trash the current system before the NCAA makes some kind of change?
Unfortunately, the answers to those two questions don't matter much. The current postseason system generates money, and in the end, the NCAA is interested in maximizing its profit - not maximizing the fairness of the game or the level of entertainment it creates.
I'm sure no one important will read this, and if they do, I'm sure they'll take it as a joke. But I think I speak for everyone when I say, "If I have to sit through one more lopsided postseason snoozer, I'm going to go insane."
So here's my proposal: Ditch the monstrosity that we call the NCAA Tournament and institute the Bowl system for college basketball.
Anyone who's played sports before knows that single-elimination tournaments don't decide true champions; computers do. Bowl season is truly the greatest time of the year for sports fans. The only "madness" that occurs in March is the bizarre manner that college basketball conducts its postseason.
There's the anti-climatic first round, which is chock-full of blowouts and easily the least exciting sports day on the calendar. Then, there are teams (San Diego, for example) that have no business playing on the same court as higher-seeded programs that have showed consistency all year (I don't know, say UConn).
And then there's the Final Four. Supposed to be the four best teams right? Not when undeserving squads (say, George Mason) somehow find themselves in a category that should reserved for teams that actually earned it (like UConn). For the sake of athletes who invest their lives in basketball (and obsessive fans), let's stop the madness in March and institute a Bowl season. I'll even give the NCAA "Tournament" Committee a head start with some Bowl projections:
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