The NCAA’s system is broken and needs to be fixed because collegiate sports just aren’t what they used to be.
It used to be that you could watch a kid develop into a full player in college basketball and be prepared to take his game to the NBA. There once was a time where college football ruled from Saturday morning to Saturday night, but with the BCS not being a clear playoff system, college football is the most incomplete sport of all. Don’t even get me started on that joke of a system that is NCAA college baseball.
Not having a playoff system that allows multiple teams to beat out whoever they draw just doesn’t make sense. I know everyone uses the theory that the NCAA and the big schools make all the money, but with an organization like the NCAA, I doubt they couldn’t come up with a playoff system that wouldn’t satisfy everyone’s need to earn.
Most fans want an elaborate 16-team super playoff format, when really all that is needed is an eight to 12 team system that will bring in enough revenue to share within conferences.
We wouldn’t get Boise State going undefeated for two-consecutive seasons without even playing in the so-called championship game. This year Boise was thought to have a chance to make that game, but on Nov. 26 they lost their first game in conference in that same time frame and are pushed out of the mix for a title. That’s one loss in almost three years. One loss relinquishes their season to a waste. The same can be said for schools like Texas Christian and Utah, who are often in the hunt until a combination of the three schools have beaten each other out.
In basketball, it’s all about March Madness and none of the regular season makes a difference to anyone now. Winning a championship is the demand on coaches on a yearly basis. There is no time to build a program over the span of your star player’s college career because they’re one-and-done gone in a year.
Now, you see a kid enter the league after just one year in college and he has to develop his jump shot, work on this, and work on that, when really he could have done that with three extra years in college. The NBA’s 18-plus-one rule isn’t a great rule, but it’s understandable for what they are trying to accomplish. But it does put a strain on the NCAA to do something about their one-and-done problem that they have yet to resolve.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out, if you start taking away scholarships from schools and start bringing civil lawsuits against the players who leave early, it will change the culture of what is acceptable and what isn’t.
Instead the NCAA just takes what it’s handed rather than doing anything about it. We’ll continue to be disrespected with conference re-alignment talks instead of playoff configurations and we’ll continue to be disregarded as viewers of your diversion brand.
But just remember – the professional leagues are growing to almost year round and what you had last year, they have now.