ANALYSIS/OPINION:
Here is the true madness of March in college basketball — it has become the sport’s three-week season.
Everything else leading up to the NCAA tournament? A schedule of bad AAU games.
College basketball has become unwatchable, an abomination of the sport that was built on the shoulders of Bill Walton and Larry Bird and Magic Johnson and others who were putting on basketball clinics that have been lost on a generation of players, only to be found on ESPN’s “30 For 30” documentaries and ESPN Classic broadcasts.
Low scoring, physical play, poor officiating, young players never schooled in the game, growing up as stars in AAU basketball — all have contributed to the demise of the quality of the game.
The only that saves the sport is this tournament, which has become a national obsession.
But it reduces college basketball to an event more than a sport.
There has been talk of expanding the NCAA tournament from its current 64 teams (68 if you count the play-in games) to 96 teams, maybe even 128 teams. Why not? It’s what college basketball has been reduced to. More teams, more games, where the thrill of having your season end with one loss overshadowing the quality of the basketball.
Conference tournaments? Maryland lost to Michigan State in the Big 10 conference tournament, and the reaction from Terps fans was, “Yeah, it would have been nice to win it, but it doesn’t really mean anything.” They were more upset at Maryland getting a No. 4 seed in the NCAA tournament instead of a No. 3 seed than they were about being bounced from the conference tournament.
It is the sudden-death quality of March Madness that makes the tournament so attractive. Even the most clueless consumer can grasp the notion of the winner keeps playing, the loser goes home. The quality of play doesn’t really matter if it is a basketball life-and-death situation that comes down to the final shot of a 55-53 game.
The regular season, though? It’s getting harder and harder to get people to pay attention.
The average attendance at Division I men’s basketball has dropped for the last seven seasons. Ratings for the game on ESPN were down this year, and, as the network’s college basketball analyst Jay Bilas told The New York Times, “People are voting with their feet.”
SportsBusiness Journal reported ESPN, which dominates coverage of the men’s college basketball season, said its flagship network’s ratings were slightly down after three consecutive record-breaking seasons.
Bilas hit the nail on the head when he put the tournament in perspective. “The tournament will bail us out,” he said. “We will make the same amount of money, and people will think it’s OK.”
It’s not OK, though. College basketball is in trouble.
Through February, Division I scoring was at 67.6 points per game — the second-lowest scoring average since 1952.
Still feeling sad Maryland is no longer part of the ACC? That conference didn’t even exist in 1952.
That’s where the game is going — backwards, a long way from the peak average scoring total per game of 76.7 points in 1990-91.
It must seem like a fairy tale to college basketball players today to hear stories about 80- and 90-point games, and players like Bird, Magic or even Maryland’s Len Bias pumping and pounding 30 points a game.
There are a number of contributing factors that have diminished the game, perhaps the greatest crime being conference alignment. The Terps’ departure from the ACC to the Big Ten may have been softened by the team’s tremendous inaugural 27-6 season in the new conference, but there is still a hole in the soul of many Maryland fans who will never experience the tradition of ACC basketball again.
It’s no coincidence that the growth of college basketball came in the decade of the 1980s, the same time the Big East emerged as a powerful, high-profile conference with star players and bigger-than-life coaches.
Now, without the tradition of conference history, regular season games have been reduced to mercenaries traveling around the country, playing meaningless opponents in meaningless games, in between the occasion marquee showdown.
Officials hoped the rule changes in 2013 would empower referees to call games closer and stop the clutching and grabbing, but that lasted one season, and it’s back to wrestling on hardwood again. So now the talk has revived again about calling the games closer — and possibly putting in a 30-second shot clock.
Either do that, or just expand college basketball’s safety net and milk the madness of March.
• Thom Loverro is co-host of “The Sports Fix,” noon to 2 p.m. daily on ESPN 980 and espn980.com.
• Thom Loverro can be reached at tloverro@washingtontimes.com.
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