In Which I Translate Greg Shaheen's Arguments for a 96-Team Tournament into English
by T.H. on Apr 2, 2010 8:42 AM EDT
in Basketball
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PrintBy this point, you've all seen John Feinsten savage Greg Shaheen, the NCAA's senior VP for basketball and business strategies. Ignoring the fact that the NCAA somehow squares their arguments that it's all about the student-athlete with the fact they have a dude whose job is "basketball and business strategies," I'd like to point you to the rest of that press conference. Mainly where they stop talking about scheduling and start getting real(ly obfuscatory):
Q. But isn't that essentially then just being a kind of money grab because you're just adding an extra day of revenue, extra TV dates, stuff like that, without truly improving the field?
GREG SHAHEEN: You have the same core teams that are of the quality, the top 34 teams right now compete in the championship. So it's not the top 65 teams necessarily in Division I that compete in the championship as it is now. This affords more teams the opportunity to have the shot or opportunity to compete for the title.
So in terms of watering it down, using your term, the reality is there are more teams on any given model, in any given year now, that have upset teams that are in the top 25 or top 50, depending on the measures, than you've ever had before, including teams that are below the traditional threshold of where a team would make it into the tournament as an at-large member.
So the opportunity for there to be an upset on any given day is part of what makes the tournament great, it's part of what's made the tournament great for the last 25 years. It's the opportunity to be able to grow it from there.
Translation: The great thing about the NCAA tournament is it's upsets. But don't worry, they won't happen to the good teams. Except they will. But they won't. The important thing is growth. Of our stock portfolio.
Q. Greg, do you really think that people in this country want to watch teams in the 30s play teams in the 90s? Isn't this going to really water down the regular season even more than it already is?
GREG SHAHEEN: Well, throughout the season right now people go watch teams in the 30s play teams in the 90s. Actually, there are a number of sold-out games where you have teams playing in the top 10 that play teams in the 300s, and the room is completely sold.
There are about 175 teams that have at or over a .500 regular-season schedule this year, and there are at or over 155 teams that have a .500 record in their conference. So the notion that going from a 65- to a 96-team championship in some way takes teams that would otherwise be staying at home or would otherwise not be capable of winning a game on any given day, at least relative to the current field structure and quality, I think merits some reexamination.
As we've gone more into it and had discussions, I think you get comfortable with the fact that when you study the regular season, you recognize that there are teams playing that may be a top one or two line seed that, with regularity, play a team that would be in the bottom 10% of Division I. And we're talking nothing in that neighborhood. We're talking about all teams that would be easily in the top third of Division I.
See, what the tournament has really been missing is all the excitement of the cupcake matches that happen in December. Because people buy tickets to those. Which means money. Which we like. For the student-athletes. Who we will not be paying.
When it comes right down to it, we feel that every team over .500, and a couple below deserve the chance to sell tickets to their fanbase on the national stage. For the money. Which we like. Also, we will be scrapping the National Championship Trophy in favor of the National Participant's Trophy. T-shirts for the 96 teams winning this year's NPT are available in the lobby. Good night.
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If not expansion then what?
The writings on the wall when it comes to college basketball, ratings are down for the regular season, conference tournaments are already meaningless in the Power 6 unless you’re a bubble team. The only true “money maker” is the tournament.
As someone who can finely be ok with admitting I don’t care about college basketball I don’t think the NCAA has much choice. Its either leave it how it is or change it. Leave it how it is and their tv contract will only increase incrimently. But, more games=more tv hours=more commercials=more revenue. Essentially they’re helping the sport be more profitable in a time when schools are hemmoraging cash to support money sucking non-revenue sports.
I’ll also say I do like the idea of more kids getting to play. Sure, there has to be a cutoff and with 65 of 344 or 19% going that ratio was good. They’re adding roughly 10% more of the sports participating body to the tourney. As a guy who played in one of those “marginal” or “mediocre” or “meaningless” bowl games having 29% of your sport play in the post season isn’t that bad in my opinion. 37.5% of the NFL gets to the playoffs.
In real numbers that’s 32 teams with 15 kids or 480 more kids getting a shot at post season play. I’m not about letting everyone in but 480 more is still less than 10% of the 5100+ that play D-1 basketball.
In the end it is about the money. Money drives the system. But I can at least recognize the benefit of seeing a few more kids who worked hard all season being rewarded. Trot out your mediocre comments if you like in the end it boils down to 480 more kids getting to say “I played in the tourney.” Sure it means nothing to you. But that’s how it is with every college fan its not about the kids or the sports survival, its about what they want.
Yeah BoYeeEEeeE
by InTheBleachers on Apr 2, 2010 9:14 AM EDT via mobile reply actions
What should they do?
I forgot my final question. If you hate expansion what should they do? How can they drive revenue in a sport where ratings are dropping and its facing serious marginalization when compared to football, NFL and NCAA.
It used to be December was the beautiful mix of football and basketball. Now football owns December and the start of January. Then it was “college bball starts for the nation in when Duke-UNC play” but then the Super Bowl and national signing day took that from the sport. Then it was championship week but as we’ve seen with our own tourney, those are dropping in importance.
March Madness is the last revenue bastion and they must capitalize. I’m not pro or anti expansion. I don’t watch enough basketball for it to matter.
If you don’t like it how would you change it?
Yeah BoYeeEEeeE
by InTheBleachers on Apr 2, 2010 9:23 AM EDT via mobile up reply actions
I think these changes are as likely to accelerate the seasonal ratings slide as they are to increase the tournaments profitability.
But to answer your question: they need to pay the athletes. If they are going to go this route, and pointedly show that, yes, it is a business, then they need to pay the people that are making them wealthy and subsidizing a bunch of other sports few people care to observe.
I don’t know how that change would help their bottom line, but that’s the change I would make.
I don't disagree at all
With the idea of paying them. I tire of hearing people say “they get a scholarship” as justifying the action. The problem is that if you pay football and basketball you also have to pay gymnastics, swimming etc.
They can’t stop the ratings slide. It will take a major scandal with the NFL and NCAA football AND the reduction of televised games for basketball’s regular season ratings to return to where they were in the 90’s. There’s too many games and its really de-energized people. It used to be a marquee matchup would happen once in a blue moon and you had to watch. Now there are games on all the time, your favorite team plays 2 a week, both on TV, plus your conference’s 11 other teams play 2 a week, all on TV and every other conference worth its salt has their games on TV as well. No more “game of the week” etc.
We can see them trying to make it work by using the football approach with “Gameday” (stupid stupid concept at basketball and i was in school when they did the first one at unc) and the “big saturday night games” but it doesn’t hold the nation captive the way it does for football.
They have to boost the tournament’s profitability because the regular season tv deals, ad-shares are meaningless at this point. 30 game schedules for 12 teams all angling for tv means 360 games, just for the ACC. Add the Big East and the rest and we’re talking way, way too much for the average fan to care about.
Yeah BoYeeEEeeE
by InTheBleachers on Apr 3, 2010 9:33 AM EDT up reply actions
First of all, I agree with capital L that this is more likely to accelerate a ratings slide than improve one. And coming from that perspective, it seems like a short-term grab for money at the expense of the health of the game. And for what? Those extra kids getting a shot at postseason play will just be moved from the NIT (which is dead because of this) to the play-in games of the NCAA. ANd fans just get games on Tuesday and Wednesday of the second week; they’ll miss half of them, as it’s one thing to blow off a Thursday or Friday afternoon once in a month, but twice in one week? The number of Cinderella runs will most likely drop with the upper half of the bracket getting a bye, and the whole thing will just become exhausting. It’ll be like the NBA playoffs, where the casual fan doesn’t even check in until the conference finals nowadays.
And let me say, the whole “percentage of teams making the playoff” is an incredibly bogus metric. The talent differential between the 344 teams in college basketball is absolutely huge. The scout team at UNC would be starting and putting up good numbers on the teams in the 200’s. You should be cutting off the playoff teams at 20% or less.
Ratings are almost always going to trend down in this day and age. There’s just more and more things vying for your attention, to keep expanding in that sort of market is just unsustainable. The NCAA seems to be doing what countless industries before them have, instead of reaching outward and putting forth what appeals to the most people, they’re turning inward and just pumping out more of what they have and directing it at a smaller and smaller fanbase. Eventually it becomes too much and everything just collapses. I’d rather not see that happen here.
Agree
I think we’re in agreeance on several things and I think that the way you describe it as being targeted at smaller and smaller fanbases until it collapses is a very accurate description. I think that is something that staunch college basketball fans do not realize, that the sport is becoming increasingly segmented and this is an attempt to not only target but capitalize on that segmentation. We’ve gone from having a lot of “college basketball fans” to UNC, Syracuse or ACC, Big East fans. Thus the continuous drop of regular season ratings. Big East fans are tuned in on Monday’s but ACC fans aren’t and vice versa on Wednesdays.
The NCAA seems to be doing what countless industries before them have, instead of reaching outward and putting forth what appeals to the most people
I’m still not sure how they would achieve this in the grand scheme of things as I think we’d all agree on the fact that anyone who doesn’t already watch March Madness or fill out a bracket isn’t going to in the future (save for children etc). So I’m not sure how they go about reaching out, that’s a question that still no one has answered. I do agree that the field of 64 appeals to the most people, an overwhelming majority in fact, but there’s still no plan from anyone to say “stop the expansion, we found another way to make money for everyone.”
Regarding the post season play and percentage of teams that was less of an argument for expansion and more of something I see as the major basketball related positive. I don’t care about coaches keeping their jobs but I do see it as a positive for that, with the move to expand all but done, these extra kids get to experience the tourney.
In the end glad we’re talking like adults.
Yeah BoYeeEEeeE
by InTheBleachers on Apr 4, 2010 3:22 PM EDT up reply actions
The result of expanding to 96 teams...
Is many teams throwing in the towel during the regular season. Also, the brackets are going to get annoying large, and although the Tar Heels would have made it in if there were 96 teams, it’d make the product more boring in general
"Left hand, right hand, it doesn't matter. I'm amphibious." - Charles Shackleford
"He’s a stiff." - The Legendary Doug Moe
"We have a great bunch of outside shooters. Unfortunately, all our games are played indoors." - Weldon Drew
"I really didn't want it, but now that I've won it, it's nice. It's an honor. It's nice to know people don't think you're a total idiot. ... It must have been a poor year for coaches." - Doug Moe...talking about winning 1987-88 Coach of the Year award.
"Keep your head up and don't let anything get to you." - Dante Bichette Jr.
I'm starting to think it may be time to give up on college sports
I’ve pretty much stopped on college football already, I can barely get interested in the very improperly named “championship” game, much less any of the bowl games. They say it’s for the kids, but it seems like every year a college team plays a bowl game without their head coach because he’s move on and they stick to their ridiculous bowl game system – sure it’s about the kids.
I love college basketball, but they continue to make moves to ruin it. I hate the ACC schedule in the 12 team conference – I feel like it’s taken a lot from conference play not having home and away with everyone. One of the best things about it has been the tournament. It’s close to perfect, they just need to get rid of that asinine play in game.
The NCAA looks like the worst thing that ever happened to college sports.
"If at first you don't succeed, try, try again. Then give up. There's no use in being a damn fool about it." ---W.C. Fields
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