How to Make a Bad Situation Worse

Next Year, We Will Expand to 32 Teams!

A 16 team conference causes all sorts of problems -unbalanced schedules, no home and away series with each team every year, the erosion of traditional, long standing rivalries, and that pesky little problem about certain teams GETTING SNUBBED because NCAA selection committee isn't smart enough to evaluate the aforementioned unbalanced schedules (and because they operate under unwritten rules which limit the number of bids each conference should get.)

It also causes problems with the season ending basketball tournament, because requiring teams to play 4 games in 4 days, with the start of the NCAA tournament just a couple of days away is insane. However, fear not college basketball fan - the Big East Basketball Conference made an announcement today - starting in in 2009 everyone gets into the tournament! It's good to see Tranghese and the conference leadership screwing up a bad thing. Its been a while since they've done something dumb, I'm glad to see they are still awake.

This is stupid in about 100 different ways and I won't list them all, but here are few reasons:

It hurts the fans in a number of different ways.

1) Fans will have to take more time off from work. The announcement today means that the tournament will have to run Tuesday-Saturday and here's what the brackets will look like. That means fans will have to basically take a week off from work to see what used to be a Friday-Sunday event.

2) It will cost fans more money. Another day of games at Madison Square Garden won't come cheap, and they aren't adding more seats to the venue, so that means one thing, higher ticket prices.

3) Tickets will be harder to come by. As it is structured now, the 16 schools are each given an allotment of tickets, and if you are hoping to get any decent seats at all, you have to buy tickets for every game. In the past this discouraged people from schools that might not make the tournament from purchasing seats. Now, with the guarantee of at least a game at the Garden, ticket demand will go up and the availability and quality of seats other schools used to have access to will go down.

4) It's more work for the consumer. As I said earlier, if you want decent seats you have buy tickets for every game. If your team loses in the first round, you are either a crazy fan like myself and stick around to watch the rest of the tournament with little rooting interest or you have to deal with other fans looking for tickets or scalpers on the street as you look to unload your unwanted merchandise. I think it's the new "You be the ticket broker" program the Big East has started - oddly, I have yet to see a press release on this.

5) Did I mention it will cost fans more money? Hotel prices in NYC are through the roof and it doesn't look like they will be coming down anytime soon. Well at least most of the schools in the league are in the NY Metro area like Marquette, Depaul and Louisville......uh wait a minute.

It's Bad for Competition

6) It makes the regular season less meaningful. Presently the last 4 teams don't make the tournament and if you ask me - that's fine. Think about it - if a team isn't good enough to finish in the top 12, they weren't going to win the tournament anyway. For people that whine that the 14th place team didn't have a fair chance, they do - it's called the regular season. Win some conference games and your problem is solved.

7) It does not help the middle tier Big East teams in regards to the NCAA tournament. It's bad enough that as the tournament is presently set up, the 5th place team has no competitive advantage over the 12th place team - other than they get to wear white jerseys. In 2009 the 5th team will be basically on equal footing as the 16th place team, having to win 4 games in 4 days, and that takes a lot out of a team.

The bottom line is that a 16 team conference doesn't work, but that's what we are stuck with for the time being. Adding teams to the end of the season tournament doesn't make things better, it only makes things worse, and the fans are the ones who will suffer as a result. Well done Tranghese, well done.