The First Church of Bracketology

The Final Four is here and within a few days a champion will be crowned, nets will be cut, and one of the four last coaches will talk to Jim Nantz, just before “One Shining Moment” and the declaration that John Wall will enter the NBA Draft.

Jared Leto and Edward Norton in 'Fight Club'

And, while you think I’d be happy, I am not.  Rather, I am frustrated and pissed with all the talk of tourney expansion. This might be our last time to enjoy sports’ greatest post-season tourney before the evil organization known as the NCAA smacks its baby around like Edward Norton on Jared Leto in Fight Club.

Seriously people, what good comes of this?  I spend many Saturdays arguing with fellow barstool pundits about formula of the college hoops season.  To the causal fan, the season truly starts at conference play, because that is when the true competition starts.  I get that.  No one really wants to see UNC beat up on Presbyterian again (Or Michigan State for that matter) but it’s the non-conference schedule that allows us to really see what teams can do.  Without it, you wouldn’t have a close call of Cornell at Kansas, or the ACC/Big Ten Challenge, or the early implosion of the Pac-10 by itself.  Little teams get a chance to be on the big stage and the throw the big boys against the wall to see if they stick.  You think it is about big boys beating up on the little guys, but on the contrary, it is the majors that have all the pressure. If UNC loses to Presbyterian or Kansas to Cornell (both at home) it will really effect their tourney resume.

It was November, not February, when I saw Butler almost take down Georgetown in the Coaches vs. Cancer tourney.  It was autumn where they truly caught my eye.  Of course we all know, if it were March, then Georgetown would have lost that game. Gimme.

Well, if (and sounds like, when) the tourney expands to 96 teams, all that will be gone. You lose the importance of the automatic bid, the excitement of “The Bubble” and Bracketbuster weekend. In a 96-team tourney, conference play will be virtually meaningless too.  I ask then, what’s the point?  We all know it is all about money and the NCAA is not afraid to hang that reason front and center like a Final Four banner.  They have not even given a counter argument.

Many coaches from the big schools want this and 80% of fans polled do not.  What is it that they know that we don’t? They know they will never have to worry about making the Dance again.  When a major conference school like St. John’s gets left out because they are not qualified, coaches get fired. That is the casualty of coaching in the big conferences.  But, no matter how Dick Vitale wants to spin it, no team who is 19-14 should make the tourney (ahem, Illinois) but yet that is all the analysts were talking about on Selection “Monday”.  If the tourney expands, then that won’t be a question.  When the play-in game is Northwestern vs. DePaul, and NJIT is on the bubble in January, the tourney has lost its luster, it’s innocence, everything that is special.  You think a #1/#16 matchup is useless now, just wait until there are bye teams.

Want to know what a 96-team tourney will look like? Here is an exercise: Take the bracket you filled out for your office pool.  Then put it on the copier and shrink the resolution down 50% so it copies on only half the page, then put it back in the paper tray and on the other half, print the NIT bracket.  BANG! There you go, there is your 96-team bracket!

Speaking of which, have you been enjoying the NIT this season? Did you see the fantastic game between URI and UNC the other night? Of course not, because unless you are an alum, you really don’t care about the NIT. So, what makes us think we will care more when these teams get knocked off early in the Big Dance?  At least in the NIT, you have a chance to win something, and while the argument is that every team has a chance, #1 seed Arizona State was not going to make the Sweet 64.  Incidentally, 19-14 Illinois (also a #1 seed)  lost in the first round of the NIT.  So much for that.

So, enjoy this Final Four, as you never have before, because it might be your last one on this level of greatness.

I urge you, as fans of the current NCAA Tournament to write your schools’ coaches and AD’s and tell them you don’t want this!

Write ESPN, ABC and FOX and tell them that if they win the contract with a plan to expand, you will not watch it – or more importantly, not buy from their sponsors!

Sign this post below and add your comments here like a petition, spread this post around to others.

Raise awareness!

The NCAA is there to serve the students and the fans!  Remind them of that!

Go Defense! Offense!

While EA Sports has already announced that it will be ending its NCAA Basketball franchise after this season (because video game players didn’t understand why they had to play a regular season…zing!), the game manufacturer and the NCAA will likely continue to suffer for the annual college sports video games they have put out over the years for some time to come. 

For those unfamiliar with sports gaming, the NCAA sells the rights to use the teams and players in video games to EA for a hefty chunk of change.  Or, they don’t actually sell the rights to the players — perish the thought! — instead a video game player gets to play an anonymous Florida QB wearing the number 15, with the same facial structure, build, stats, and religious alignment of Tim Tebow.  And then the game conveniently lets you edit the names of the players to reveal that, coincidentally, the announcers pre-recorded those names! 

This scheme continued for some time before Ed O’Bannon of UCLA and Sam Keller, a former ASU and Nebraska QB decided to file suits challenging the NCAA’s right to sell their likenesses for its own gain.

Last week in federal court, Keller prevailed in defeating EA’s motion to dismiss the suit, meaning the game manufacturer is poised to undergo an expensive and time-consuming scouring of their documents unless they settle, which I would imagine they would — a public review of these documents, likely rife with NCAA correspondence that cynically treats college athletes as unpaid pawns in a billion-dollar boon for the organization charged with protecting them, probably would be a PR nightmare on par with, I don’t know, unnecessarily expanding the tournament.

DePaul head coach Jerry Wainwright was fired today after five seasons.

So, with Tom Brady and his boos, and Mark McGuire and his juice dominating the sports headlines today, two little stories about former Richmond coaches hit the wire today with little if any notice.  And the two coaches are going in opposite directions.

First, Jerry Wainwright was fired from DePaul today after 22 consecutive Big East regular season losses.  DePaul ended the last year’s regular season recording all “L”s in conference play.  Strangely, the Blue Demons beat Cincinnati in the first round of the Big East Tourney and almost took down Providence in the second round.  This season, DePaul was off to a good start, winning their first four games before starting the free fall eventually losing the first three conference games of the year.  While at Richmond (2002-2005) Wainwright posted a 50-41 record, going to the NCAA Tournament once (2004) and the NIT once (2003), both times losing in the first round.  Ironically, it was Providence who knocked them out of the 2003 NIT.

Michigan Coach John Beilein agrees to a contract extension to coach in Ann Arbor until 2016.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the court, Michigan’s John Beilein, who coached Richmond for five seasons before Wainwright, signed a contract extension that will keep him in Ann Arbor until 2016.  Beilein left the Spider program in 2002 to take over the West Virginia program before moving to Michigan in 2007.  Last season, Beilein brought the Wolverines back the NCAA Tournament for the in ten seasons and while this season has been up-and-down, he is recruiting solid talent and shows no signs of slowing progress.

Too bad the same can’t be said for former Mountaineer Rich Rodriguez.