My Annual Gripe About the NCAA Tournament

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Selection Sunday is a religious holiday in Kentucky (and Indiana [where my brother lives] and North Carolina). That's only half-joking. We take college basketball very seriously in Kentucky (as they do in the other two states mentioned). Kentucky fans (I tend to not count myself as one...as my late lamented friend Tim Wilson used to say about Johnny Cash fans, I like Kentucky, I just don't like Kentucky fans) get under my skin because they think it's not the NCAA Tournament, it's the Kentucky Invitational. Even when Kentucky gets the #1 seed the fans gripe: gripe about Duke being in the tourney, gripe about having "a hard bracket," gripe about Duke being in the tourney, gripe about having to play regionals in Louisville instead of Lexington, and gripe about Duke being in the tourney. There's plenty to gripe about, too. Every year it seems that this arbitrary "formula" for deciding who "on the bubble" gets in and who goes to the NIT (which apparently stands for the "Not Interesting Tournament" [it actually means National Invitational Tournament], because the NIT selection show is 30 minutes compared to four hours of selection and discussion about the NCAA). Monmouth is a good example: last year the NCAA wanted a "strength of schedule," so Monmouth scheduled a brutal non-conference schedule...and won a lot of them. They didn't get invited to the "Big Dance" despite doing what the "selection committee" said teams should do for consideration. Kentucky head coach John Calipari said that he doesn't even know what's going on with these selections because the unspoken rules change every year. (I have to agree with him on that.) As for my personal gripes are, it begins with what Coach Cal alluded to. I think the NCAA selection committee is more interested in which teams' fans are going to buy tickets than who's got a great non-conference schedule. Let's face it, the NCAA tournament is the NCAA's cash cow, and they are not going to slay this goose laying the golden eggs. Kentucky would probably be in the tournament if they had an 0-32 record, for one reason: Kentucky fans travel. In his ESPN interview Calipari said he was afraid they were going to Alaska. Let me assure you: if Kentucky had been sent to Alaska the audience would be at least 1/3 dressed in Wildcat blue. To put it another way: this morning there was a fatal car wreck not too far from Louisville. That isn't going to be the lead story on the news tonight. The lead story is going to be that Kentucky's a 4 seed, is playing in Iowa, and phone numbers for the ticket and travel information. Monmouth isn't in the tournament because Monmouth fans aren't going to take four days off from work and go to the games in Des Moines or Spokane (or Alaska, as Cal joked) the way Kentucky fans, Carolina fans, Duke fans, or IU fans are going to. I've opined that the Grammy nominations seem to be geared with one eye on the ratings of the TV show, and I truly believe this is no different. The economic impact for an NCAA regional site is about $10-$18 million. The NCAA wants the money, so if they have two teams that are equal in terms of "RPI," "strength of schedule," "quality wins," and all those other cockamamie terms thrown around every year at this time, then the edge is going to the team whose fans will go to the game. I'm sorry, but I just don't see any other rationale for the way a team is ignored in favor of another team that's a "bigger name." And, speaking of money, another problem I have is the way the NCAA continually rewards the same cities over and over and over with the rights to host the Final Four. Consider that Chicago is the second biggest city in the U.S. Do you know how many times they've hosted a Final Four? Try never. The closest was the 1956 title game in Evanston, a northern suburb of Chicago. Los Angeles, the third largest city in the U.S. and home to the 11-time champion UCLA Bruins, hasn't hosted a Final Four since 1972...and NO Final Four has been held in California since 1975. Meanwhile, Indianapolis has hosted a Final Four five times (and is slated to host it again in 2021). Atlanta is a four-time host of the championship. The same goes for the regional games: it's the same host cities repeatedly. At least this year they have separate sites. In recent years, however, it's been one city hosting two regions. (That's another problem: you'd think an organization supposedly dedicated to education of student athletes would to a little better on their geography, instead of having "west regional" games in Nashville, "midwest regional" games in Buffalo, "south regional" games in Phoenix, and "east regional" games in Spokane.) I can't help but think that the money that's driving the NCAA's decision to have a team with traveling fans over a more deserving team is also driving their decision to repeatedly return to the same cities. The good thing about all of this is that it means that the end of the NCAA basketball season means it's almost time for opening day in baseball! Fill out your brackets and let the madness begin!