College Basketball

The more I follow college basketball, the less I like college basketball. Number one Duke got killed by Miami a couple of nights ago. The Gophers have now lost 3 straight and, and number six Arizona got beat by unranked UCLA last night.

This is nowhere NEAR as good as college football. I think part of the problem is that the rankings come out too early. I'd suggest they not even bother with any kind of rankings until the end of January.

You know, let the teams play some big games before anybody decides how good anybody really is. It might even add some excitement to the "let's invite everybody to the year-end tournament" known as March Madness. IF anybody really can beat anybody else at this level, then only rankings at the end really matter anyway, and they would just be used for setting seeds in the tournament.

Early season play would mean more if losses meant more. Right now, wins and losses are pretty much meaningless. Everybody already knows all the teams I already mentioned today are going to be IN the tournament. The only real excitement is where they'll be seeded. By waiting to announce those rankings they'd actually be building anticipation FOR the tournament. Which is the only thing any college basketball fan really cares about anyway.

OR, you could turn the ENTIRE season into a tournament. As soon as YOUR team has been beaten ten (pick a number-maybe that's too many, maybe that's too few) times for the year, you are officially eliminated from the NCAAs in March. EVERY game would then matter again.

Only teams with less than 10 (again pick a number, any reasonable number) losses would even be INVITED to the tournament. The number of entries would vary from year to year based on record and record alone. Games in November would matter. Games in December would matter. Games in January... okay you get the idea.

Imagine that your favorite team has 8 losses with two weeks to go in the season and two tough road games coming up. Do you think you'd care MORE about watching those two games if the season was at stake? Right now random voters determine their entrance into the tournament. Let their RECORD decide instead. Give them concrete goals instead of voters in a back room.

The season will matter. The tournament will matter.

Easy, peasy.