WWTBAM Bored

I'm not talking about fans. I'm talking about teams.

It seems post-season men's NCAA D-I basketball is as bad as I-A football's bowl system -- have a winning record, get to play somewhere.

Besides the NCAA tournament (Big Bucks!) and the NIT (not so big bucks, but you'll still likely break even; besides, the NCAA owns them too), there are three tertiary post-season tournaments: the College Basketball Invitational, the CollegeInsider.com tournament, and the new Vegas 16 tournament. These tourneys have 16, 32, and 16 teams respectively, and usually end up costing the schools money.

Did I say 16, 32, and 16 teams? It's ended up as 16, 26, and 8 teams because not enough schools were suckers enough to lose money to play in a tournament that no one watches / has heard of / doesn't get much air play (other than the CBI, which gets some ESPN love).

The CollegeInsider.com tournament has: Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, UC Irvine, Tennessee-Martin, Army, New Hampshire, Norfolk State, Boston University, Texas at Arlington, Ball State, Louisiana-Monroe, Mercer, South Carolina State, Jackson State, Sam Houston State, Grand Canyon, Coastal Carolina, Furman, Tennessee State, Savannah State, Fordham, Columbia, Fairfield, NJIT, Central Michigan, North Dakota, Louisiana-Lafayette.

The Vegas 16 (still keeping that name) include East Tennessee State, Louisiana Tech, Northern Illinois, Oakland, Old Dominion, Tennessee Tech, Towson, and UC Santa Barbara.

Yep, those are teams I want to be watching.

SpacemanSpiff wrote:
Did I say 16, 32, and 16 teams? It's ended up as 16, 26, and 8 teams because not enough schools were suckers enough to lose money to play in a tournament that no one watches / has heard of / doesn't get much air play (other than the CBI, which gets some ESPN love).

The CollegeInsider.com tournament has: Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, UC Irvine, Tennessee-Martin, Army, New Hampshire, Norfolk State, Boston University, Texas at Arlington, Ball State, Louisiana-Monroe, Mercer, South Carolina State, Jackson State, Sam Houston State, Grand Canyon, Coastal Carolina, Furman, Tennessee State, Savannah State, Fordham, Columbia, Fairfield, NJIT, Central Michigan, North Dakota, Louisiana-Lafayette.

The Vegas 16 (still keeping that name) include East Tennessee State, Louisiana Tech, Northern Illinois, Oakland, Old Dominion, Tennessee Tech, Towson, and UC Santa Barbara.

Yep, those are teams I want to be watching.

The CBI tournament got some big name teams from conferences like the Big 10, Pac 10, and ACC in past years, but these lower end tournaments now have a policy (I'm not sure if it's their policy or that of the conferences not to take those teams. So, you won't see teams like Clemson and Alabama, which had winning records but didn't make the NIT field. And this year, Louisville and SMU, which would easily have made the NCAA, were on probation, and LSU, which would have made the NIT, opted not to play, so that took three more teams away from the pool from those lower tourneys.

silverscreenselect wrote:

SpacemanSpiff wrote:
Did I say 16, 32, and 16 teams? It's ended up as 16, 26, and 8 teams because not enough schools were suckers enough to lose money to play in a tournament that no one watches / has heard of / doesn't get much air play (other than the CBI, which gets some ESPN love).

The CollegeInsider.com tournament has: Texas A&M-Corpus Christi, UC Irvine, Tennessee-Martin, Army, New Hampshire, Norfolk State, Boston University, Texas at Arlington, Ball State, Louisiana-Monroe, Mercer, South Carolina State, Jackson State, Sam Houston State, Grand Canyon, Coastal Carolina, Furman, Tennessee State, Savannah State, Fordham, Columbia, Fairfield, NJIT, Central Michigan, North Dakota, Louisiana-Lafayette.

The Vegas 16 (still keeping that name) include East Tennessee State, Louisiana Tech, Northern Illinois, Oakland, Old Dominion, Tennessee Tech, Towson, and UC Santa Barbara.

Yep, those are teams I want to be watching.

. . . . So, you won't see teams like Clemson and Alabama, which had winning records but didn't make the NIT field.

Alabama did make the NIT. They just got stomped by Creighton in the first round.

I have no problem with these other tournaments. Teams are obviously free to play in them or not. Some teams are choosing to do so. I'm free to pay attention or not. I will not since outside of Ball State and maybe a couple of others in the NIT I don't care who wins.

My home state, Indiana, lets every single high school in every sport into the state tournament at the end of the year regardless of record. Some say that makes the regular season irrelevant. I do not. I'd be OK with letting every college team into some sort of post-season competition. That sort of happens now with the conference basketball tournaments. I guess it is a minority viewpoint but probably as a legacy of my background I see the regular season and post-season as two separate things. You play in the regular season to win games, to beat rivals, to win a conference, city or county championship, and to get better. Then at the end of that you may get a chance to win a wider competition.

I personally think that all levels would benefit from this outlook. Play games in the regular season to win them. Not to qualify for the post-season but to beat the team in front of you. Win those games to win your local competition be that your city, county, conference, league, division, conference, or even just to beat the team you are playing that night. There are no meaningless games to me when one of my teams is playing. I want my team to win that game. The year that the Detroit Lions went 0-16 I watched every game because I wanted to see my team win that game.

Others may, and obviously do, differ.

andrewjackson wrote:I have no problem with these other tournaments. Teams are obviously free to play in them or not. Some teams are choosing to do so. I'm free to pay attention or not. I will not since outside of Ball State and maybe a couple of others in the NIT I don't care who wins.

My home state, Indiana, lets every single high school in every sport into the state tournament at the end of the year regardless of record. Some say that makes the regular season irrelevant. I do not. I'd be OK with letting every college team into some sort of post-season competition. That sort of happens now with the conference basketball tournaments. I guess it is a minority viewpoint but probably as a legacy of my background I see the regular season and post-season as two separate things. You play in the regular season to win games, to beat rivals, to win a conference, city or county championship, and to get better. Then at the end of that you may get a chance to win a wider competition.

I personally think that all levels would benefit from this outlook. Play games in the regular season to win them. Not to qualify for the post-season but to beat the team in front of you. Win those games to win your local competition be that your city, county, conference, league, division, conference, or even just to beat the team you are playing that night. There are no meaningless games to me when one of my teams is playing. I want my team to win that game. The year that the Detroit Lions went 0-16 I watched every game because I wanted to see my team win that game.

Others may, and obviously do, differ.

This may be the only time and issue on record where andrewjackson agrees with Bob Knight.

andrewjackson wrote: My home state, Indiana, lets every single high school in every sport into the state tournament at the end of the year regardless of record. Some say that makes the regular season irrelevant. I do not. I'd be OK with letting every college team into some sort of post-season competition. That sort of happens now with the conference basketball tournaments.

Most conferences do allow every team that's not on probation or sanctions (Louisville, SMU) to play in the conference tournament and theoretically have a chance at the NCAA tournament. A few of the smaller conferences limit their tournaments to eight teams or so for logistical or economic reasons. but all the teams in the majors and mid-majors play.

This year, the NIT is inviting every team that won its conference's regular season championship but did not get invited to the NCAA because they lost in the conference tourney and didn't get an at-large bid. 18 teams qualified that way, leaving only 14 at-large slots for major-conference schools like Georgia and Georgia Tech.

mrkelley23 wrote:

andrewjackson wrote:I have no problem with these other tournaments. Teams are obviously free to play in them or not. Some teams are choosing to do so. I'm free to pay attention or not. I will not since outside of Ball State and maybe a couple of others in the NIT I don't care who wins.

My home state, Indiana, lets every single high school in every sport into the state tournament at the end of the year regardless of record. Some say that makes the regular season irrelevant. I do not. I'd be OK with letting every college team into some sort of post-season competition. That sort of happens now with the conference basketball tournaments. I guess it is a minority viewpoint but probably as a legacy of my background I see the regular season and post-season as two separate things. You play in the regular season to win games, to beat rivals, to win a conference, city or county championship, and to get better. Then at the end of that you may get a chance to win a wider competition.

I personally think that all levels would benefit from this outlook. Play games in the regular season to win them. Not to qualify for the post-season but to beat the team in front of you. Win those games to win your local competition be that your city, county, conference, league, division, conference, or even just to beat the team you are playing that night. There are no meaningless games to me when one of my teams is playing. I want my team to win that game. The year that the Detroit Lions went 0-16 I watched every game because I wanted to see my team win that game.

Others may, and obviously do, differ.

This may be the only time and issue on record where andrewjackson agrees with Bob Knight.

I know of at least one other issue on which we agree: the NBA stinks.

“If the NBA was on channel five and a bunch of frogs making love were on channel four, I’d watch the frogs, even if they were coming in fuzzy.”

silverscreenselect wrote:This year, the NIT is inviting every team that won its conference's regular season championship but did not get invited to the NCAA because they lost in the conference tourney and didn't get an at-large bid.

This is at least the second year that the NIT has done this, maybe the third.

AJ, sorry. I had Purdue.

andrewjackson wrote: I know of at least one other issue on which we agree: the NBA stinks.

“If the NBA was on channel five and a bunch of frogs making love were on channel four, I’d watch the frogs, even if they were coming in fuzzy.”

We've missed you here, AJ. Maybe this will make you stop by more often!

Beebs52 wrote:AJ, sorry. I had Purdue.

Me, too. Going a long way.

Sigh. We are just not good at tournaments.

andrewjackson wrote:

Beebs52 wrote:AJ, sorry. I had Purdue.

Me, too. Going a long way.

Sigh. We are just not good at tournaments.

Okay, I'll say it:

Spoiler

Purdue Pur-didn't