If you believe Jeff Gilbert’s conclusion that expanding the NCAA basketball tournament is a bad idea…consider another reality about sports, more sports, and sports to the point of it losing its competitive savor. The numbers don’t lie.
If you didn’t read Jeff Gilbert’s Friday column rebuking the NCAA’s consideration for expanding their championship basketball tournament from 68 to 72 teams…you should. I highly recommend it.
I liked it so well that I read it twice, and then a third time. ‘Gibby,’ as we call him, can write! And with just enough ‘old school’ to help clear your head when progressive logic is hammering at you that more is better…no matter how bad it is!
But I couldn’t help but think about things that Jeff couldn’t write, because of space and time – things that others with life’s wisdoms are probably thinking.
Publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA sports and Ohio State baseball for Press Pros Magazine.com.
Here’s one personal reality, pertinent to the tournament at its present size. There’s so many teams now that I can barely remember – don’t know who’s playing who, and where, or when. I really don’t get interested until the round of 16. If there’s a Butler or Florida Atlantic in it, so much the better. But like the Civil War, change of thinking and new perspectives on it never change the outcome.
What network is the game on? It’s confusing – CBS, TNT, TBS?
And no Billy Packer. Lord, how I miss his ACC bias.
Actually, by the time the high school state tournament is over I can say that I’m ready for something else. That’s right, and basketball is a sport that I righteously enjoy. But the seasons – all the seasons – are so long now….
The NBA Finals are in mid-June, and in June I’m watching one thing. Baseball!
I can honestly say that I’ve never watched a WNBA game, and the reason is…July is not basketball season. It has nothing to do with women’s basketball. I’m just not into it come July.
And the reason they play their schedule in the summer is because of competition with the NBA. Even with Caitlin Clark, and even with the rise in popularity for the WNBA, head to head, the WNBA benefits from having the stage to itself.
I can say the same about football. By the time the Super Bowl is played – and now the NCAA championship game – a lot of people are done with football and the constant 24-7 analysis. It’s time to watch basketball, and three months into that season.
Don’t even talk to me about the USFL in the spring? Or even those who entertain themselves by watching it. Compared to the real thing, that’s like comparing frozen pizza to the Keyhole.
At every level of sport we’ve pushed the envelope now for the sake of inclusion and financial greed to the point of exhaustion and cynicism. Whoever it was that once said that “less is more” knew that half the number of really good players is going to beat twice the number of really average players.
When this man played…10 of the 16 major league franchises finished the season with a winning record.
Hence, only 16 of the 30 major league baseball teams had a winning record as of July 26 (53.3%). And back in 1960, before the original MLB expansion, 10 of the 16 existing teams finished the season with a winning record (62.5%).
In the just-finished NBA season, only 14 of the 30 teams in the league finished the season with a winning record (46.6%). And five of the 30 teams had less than 25 wins in an 82-game schedule (29.2%).
We’ve expanded leagues, and seasons, and playoff opportunities now to the point where we’ve not only watered down the competition, but the logic of those who believe we need seven state champions in high school, and for those with hardly enough athletes to field a team.
Kudos to Gibby…for calling out National Federation of High School’s CEO Karissa Niehoff, quoting her: “Unlike all other levels of sport in our nation, the No. 1 goal of high school sports is not winning games but helping students learn valuable lessons that prepare them for successful careers and lives.”
Well, she obviously doesn’t understand that no lesson is more valuable than to learn that employers with the best-paying jobs want to hire…WINNERS?
Simply put, that’s a terrible, and confusing statement to make when you represent a million high school student-athletes nationwide – something you want your own kids to understand when they pack their bags and move out of the house and into the real world.
And if Niehoff’s #1 goal is helping kids learn that getting embarrassed is OK as long as you learn…goal #2 is, “We’ve got to make more money.” That’s how you ‘Protect the Purpose’, with overlapping, never-ending competition and six weeks of extended post-season play. You don’t do it if you’re losing money, and the NCAA’s proposal to expand to 72 teams (or more) is just another, more expensive mouthpiece for the same sympathetic narrative over someone being left behind.
Finally, I know for a fact that NCAA president Charlie Baker never saw the Ohio State men play last winter. If he had he would have come to the same conclusion as 8,000 others, nightly. They weren’t good enough.
Or even deserving, using the oft-used term when someone like Baker (a former politician, of course) gets that warm ‘feel-good’ sensation about governing. What teams that come up short deserve are the benefits we all once learned from the school of hard knocks.
Back when it actually hurt to get beat.
Back when people were both figuratively, and literally, hungry.
Back when we didn’t spoon feed them…life’s lessons.
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