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Move the regular season back?


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#1 Oriole85

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Posted 19 March 2014 - 03:35 PM

College HotlineCollege basketball: Want to make the regular season more relevant? Move it

 

Disparage the Bowl Championship Series all you want. It helped create what is arguably the best regular season in sports.

 

College basketball, on the other hand, has a forgettable regular season and an incredible postseason.


As the satirical news website The Onion noted in a headline Monday, one day after the brackets were unveiled: “Nation Gears Up For Start Of College Basketball Season.”

 

Shaheen, who was dubbed the “tourney czar” during his 12 years in charge of March Madness, believes more high-profile non-conference games are needed to boost early-season interest and draw casual fans to the sport.


“There are approximately 5,400 games in the season and only 100 or 110 could be considered marquee non-conference matchups,’’ he said. “The notion that only two percent of all the games fit that description is nuts.’’


His suggestion: Reward teams that seek out marquee games, perhaps by reserving a handful of the tournament’s precious at-large berths to the teams with the toughest non-conference schedules.

 

The basketball season used to start when college football ended: Thanksgiving weekend. Now basketball tips off in early November and football ends in early December — one quarter of the basketball season conflicts directly with football during its sizzling stretch run.


Add the NFL regular season and playoffs, and college basketball barely registers on the mainstream sports radar until February: By the time the Seahawks won the Super Bowl, most teams had played two-thirds of their regular-season games.


The best long-term solution is to move the start of basketball back three or four weeks to avoid the steamroller that is the college football regular season.

 


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#2 Chris B

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Posted 19 March 2014 - 04:21 PM

That would limit games and limit revenue for the schools, unless you're talking about pushing the championship further into April, which is where it will battle with MLB for viewers.

 

March Madness effectively becomes April Madness.

 

I just don't see it happening. Football is king and people will watch that through Dec/Jan no matter what.



#3 Oriole85

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Posted 19 March 2014 - 04:47 PM

That would limit games and limit revenue for the schools, unless you're talking about pushing the championship further into April, which is where it will battle with MLB for viewers.

 

March Madness effectively becomes April Madness.

 

I just don't see it happening. Football is king and people will watch that through Dec/Jan no matter what.

That's addressed:

Start the regular season the second week of December, end it in early April, and play the Final Four in late April.

 

March Madness becomes April Anarchy (or May-hem, depending how far back you move it).

 

I don't think it's going to happen atleast anytime soon, but I can see it down the road. I'd like to see more things like the Champions Classic. In cfb, you have enough compelling OOC matchups even with the every game counts mentality. There's too many cream puff games. You need to give coaches incentives to play a more challenging schedule. And unlike the Champions Classic, I'd love to see them primarily on college campuses, the pro arenas are too sterile.


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#4 You Play to Win the Game

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Posted 19 March 2014 - 04:51 PM

Anything that starts with the premise that college bball needs fixing should be dismissed.

#5 Oriole85

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Posted 19 March 2014 - 04:56 PM

Anything that starts with the premise that college bball needs fixing should be dismissed.

I think part of the problem is no matter what when you have 36 At-L selections (and 68 total teams to begin with), the regular season is diminished to begin with no matter what "fixes" you do.

 

Take the UVA/Duke game, both teams were making the Tourney and as high seeds. If Duke goes farther than UVA which is a good possibility, how much did UVA get by winning that game? In UF's Conf CG, they could've lost and likely still gotten the #1 seed. UofA lost to UCLA still was the second overall team in the Tourney (and likely would've been even if they won).


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#6 You Play to Win the Game

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Posted 19 March 2014 - 05:02 PM

I just don't view it as a problem in any event. I still enjoy the regular season. And their postseason is as good as it gets from a sheer entertainment/shock value standpoint.

#7 Oriole85

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Posted 19 March 2014 - 05:05 PM

I just don't view it as a problem in any event. I still enjoy the regular season. And their postseason is as good as it gets from a sheer entertainment/shock value standpoint.

I agree with that, it does come at the expense of a diminished regular season IMO. I do think pushing it back would be beneficial. Championship Week seems like a good starting point to me with how few games there are that day. Thanksgiving wouldn't be a bad starting point either IMO.


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#8 Oriole85

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Posted 19 March 2014 - 06:40 PM

That would limit games and limit revenue for the schools, unless you're talking about pushing the championship further into April, which is where it will battle with MLB for viewers.

 

March Madness effectively becomes April Madness.

 

I just don't see it happening. Football is king and people will watch that through Dec/Jan no matter what.

Jim Nantz would have fun with that, when UNC won with Sean May he did usual scripted line, "What started in March, ended in April, belonged to May."


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