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Wake Me Up in March

By Jackson Govatos, Section College
Posted on Sun Feb 26 2006 at 11:17 PM EST
More on: (all tags)

How many times have you heard someone say this:

    "Oh, no! Duke lost!?! They aren't undefeated anymore!?! How could this be? This could ruin their entire season! Now, instead of getting a #1 seed in the NCAA Tournament, they might get a 2 seed! This really sucks."

    Hopefully, nobody has ever heard that. Here's why: the college basketball regular season has absolutely no point. Really. Its only objective is to decide who's playing in the NCAA Tournament--which is one of the best playoff systems in sports today. Obviously the goal in any sport is to reach the playoffs, but none is more exclusively focused than college basketball. In what other sport do people worry more about their team's seeding for the tournament than the team's actual record?

I have nothing against college basketball. I really don't. I greatly enjoy watching the Tournament in March where every game matters. My problem is that none of the regular season games matter at all. Here are the arguments against my theory and why they are all untrue.

And I agree with the fact that your record affects your seed. But in the end, seeding really doesn't matter. If a team brings their A game, they could knock out a #1 or #2 seed easily.

Take last year's Michigan State team for example. They were almost unknown in the regular season, didn't win their conference, and drew a 5 seed (which is rather low considering their conference is the Big 10). Most people couldn't name a single player on their team. But they went out and beat #1 seeded Duke to go to the Final Four. Was Duke the better team in the regular season? Sure. But it didn't really matter, as Michigan State made the Final Four and they didn't.

Seeding doesn't matter even at the lowest levels. Last year, a #14 seed (Bucknell) beat a #3 seed (Kansas). Sure, upsets like that are rare, but they do happen. It seems like every tournament has a #12 seed or even lower that makes it to the Sweet Sixteen, like Wisconsin-Milwaukee a few years ago.

My point is, even if you don't do too hot in the regular season and draw a relatively low seed, you still have a decent chance of going to the Final Four if your team is talented.

Argument #2: Too many losses in the regular season and you may not even make the tournament.

    While it's true that a higher percentage of the teams make postseason play in college football than college basketball, there are still 64 spots--more than any other sport's playoffs. In college basketball, if you lose ten games and play in a major conference, you still have a good shot at making the NCAAs.

    Also, conferences in college basketball are much easier to win than in college football. You could be stuck in second place all season with a clearly superior team ahead of you and still come out as conference champions based on performance in one game. An example of this would be how last year's Kentucky team was clearly better than Florida's team, but Florida emerged as conference champions.

    (If you think about it, the system for deciding a conference in college basketball is the stupidest in any sport. Why do you give teams with, say, a 15-11 record during the regular season a chance to win the conference? Imagine if in the NFL they completely disregarded the standings at the end of the season and put every team from each division in a tournament to decide who's best. That would be a nightmare.)

    So basically, if you can keep a decent record during the regular season, you are guaranteed a spot in the tournament.

Argument 3: Games between ranked teams matter.

    The only thing that games between ranked teams matter for is, well, rankings. And the rankings are pointless too: they aren't even used to decide what seeds teams get. In fact, you could drop games to every ranked team that you play, beat up on terrible teams, and still have a tournament-worthy record at the end of the year.

    The thing I hate the most about college basketball's regular season is that any particular game doesn't really matter. In college football, every game is do-or-die. If you lose even a single game, you are probably out of the national championship race. This results in superior effort by the players game in and game out.

    Meanwhile, in college basketball, losing a game is no problem. Your ranking may temporarily drop, but since undefeated teams are quite rare, you could still even have the #1 ranking after a loss. It doesn't really matter how many games you lose as long as you make the tournament. Any team that makes it has a shot at the title. Therefore, we may not even being seeing these player's best efforts every game in college basketball. It doesn't matter if they lose as long as they keep a winning record.

    Here's another problem I have with college basketball's regular season: there are few truly good games. This is for a few reasons:

1. Few teams are matched up during the regular season that have marquee players. In any given season, there are only about 5-10 great players, so normally they rarely play each other. It's hard to generate interest in a game where you only know one or two players. You don't get to see great one-on-one matchups like you do during March Madness, where almost every team has a noteworthy player. When you don't know the players, it's hard to watch the game.

2. There aren't as many rivalries in college basketball as there are in college football. In any given week during the fall, there are usually one or two rivalry games per week, culminating in the rivalry-fest that is the later weeks. In college basketball, it's rare that any rivalry game is played. Why? Because there aren't many. Besides Duke-North Carolina, there is no marquee rivalry that generates the interest of every fan. Each conference only generates about one rivalry that is even existent. Also, most of the great college rivalries on the gridiron don't carry over to the court. Auburn-Alabama, Florida State-Miami, Ohio State-Michigan, Army-Navy, and USC-Notre Dame are examples of great college football rivalries that don't exist in college basketball.

3. There are only one or two enjoyable teams to watch in each conference. You could tell me that the Big East is loaded with talented teams. And it is. But there are only a few teams that generate much interest--Connecticut, West Virginia, Pitt, and Villanova. In college football, the best conferences have 5-7 teams that are enjoyable to watch. Not the case with college basketball. And this is the most talented conference, according to almost everyone. In the Pac 10, for example, there isn't a single team that I could stand watching for more than five minutes. How `bout the Big 12? None. The SEC? Two--Florida and Tennessee. The Big 10? Illinois and Ohio State. The ACC? Just Duke (the most entertaining team to watch in the country) and North Carolina.