The only real issue I have with it is conference tournaments deciding the automatic qualifier. That’s a bad idea that often eliminates worthy teams. If you eliminated that we’d have no bad teams in the field.
It's by far the best 4 days in sports and always has been. Whole offices get into it, people take off work that Thursday and Friday every year for it, people fly out with old friends to Vegas every year to hit the sports book or fly out every year wherever their school is playing, everyone fills out their brackets whether they follow sports/college basketball or not etc.
Nailed it. Cindarellas for the most part have fans cheer for them because they are the lovable underdog and fans want to see David take down Goliath. But Cindarellas by their definition are the smaller schools and don't have many organic fans in their fan bases and therefore don't bring that many fans for the Final Four TV/online viewing and won't create big ratings because of that. The TV execs want the big brand names, they want to see Goliath vs Goliath generally speaking.
It happens to one or two a year, but the low major regular season champions are still going to be smushed for the most part. The ones who are good enough to add value to the tourney usually have a good enough resume to get in anyway - but it is true there is a small subset of teams ranked around 50 that have to win their tourneys that sometimes get left out when they have potential.
Morons always do.
You mean "bloviating hot air jack a s s" ? That's not a "sports analyst", that's talking head full of idiotic ideas
That's ALL he was looking for
And the fourth betting interest is not just invited. This guy is a moron
How about this. Joel Klatt is the dumbest sportscaster and the least aware one in all sports. The NCAA basketball Tounsment is the best tournament in all sports! Watching the cinderellas knock off bluebloods is great and if the bluebloodbgetting knocked off is Duke or Kentucky all the better.
I agree on that. Talk about made for tv events. For major conferences they are mostly irrelevant. Oh you have the odd Georgetown or NC State making a run mostly costing some place holder bubble team a slot. But mostly it doesn’t matter in any way. If you must do it, I would do a 4 team tournament. Everyone else have a nice Summer. For smaller leagues you watch far too many regular season champs get knocked off. Happened to Central Connecticut the last 2 years. Win the NEC Regular season but lost in the NEC tournament. Happened to Monmouth a few years ago when they had like 2 losses all season.
Is a bit silly when you think about it - rewarding a team on a little tournament rather than a season long accomplishment. I'm all for doing anything we can to get the best teams out of these conferences in. We don't want totally uncompetetive games in the dance.
2011 was a strange year. No GREAT teams. Just a lot of really good ones. That Butler team was actually very good. I don’t think they were viewed as your typical mid-major. They had been to the Sweet 16 in 2007 or 08, then the title game in 2010 and were back in 2011. In 2010 they missed a shot at the buzzer and lost to Duke by 2. Many writers expected them to beat UConn in 2011. A lot of people thought of them as the Gonzaga of the plains. It’s hard to get to the Championship game 2 years in a row.
That's true, Butler was on a roll. I have recency bias. It is also annoying that I have 25 or 6 to 4 stuck in my head for some completely unrelated reason. apologies to all.
I don't remember it like that. I think UConn was a 5 or 6 point favorite. That 2011 Butler team wasn't as good as the 2010 team with Gordon Hayward.
But, without the BE tourney in 2011, we may have been on the wrong side of the bubble. 19-9
We were nowhere near the bubble. We beat the #2 ranked team, #7, #8, #9, #12. Not a single bad loss, undefeated out of conference, and the Big East was considered the best conference ever that season.
UConn was already in. But they moved up a few seed lines winning the BET.
