In fact only 2 champions (3 titles) with the since 1985 have not played FBS/1A football and one of those started playing the next season. People do like the early round upsets, no doubt, but not once the teams get deep. There is a reason that those Major-midmajor Elite 8/Final Four games are the early game and the Power teams play in prime time.
We won the NC in the 1998-99 basketball season and began our 2-year transition period to I-A football 2 years later in the 2000-01 football season and didn’t become a full fledged member of I-A until 4 years later in the 2002-03 season.
So, only 2 champions (3 titles) since the rather arbitrary starting point of the 1986 tournament? Why not use round numbers - say, 40 years - which would make it 3 champions (5 titles).
And since you’re intent on highlighting number of teams which won championships, let’s also acknowledge that over the past 40 years only 21 schools have won championships once we’ve accounted for those who’ve won multiple championships.
“. . . once the teams get deep.” And we measure that only by champions, many of whom won that championship game in very close games, in a number of cases helped by a ref’s bad call? So, let’s look at the number of non-IA/FBS teams in the finals over the past 40 years, not just the champions. That number would be 11. In 2020, the tournament was cancelled with Gonzaga being ranked #2 in both polls. With no tournament, that makes an even dozen in the final two. I believe that all of those championship games were played in prime time. And since the Final Four games are always played on a Saturday, the notion of “prime time” is irrelevant since prime time refers to weekday nights - unless you want to claim that Sunday afternoon NFL games are a lesser attraction since they’re not played at night.
I’m not sure what the connection is that you’re trying to draw between I-A/FBS football and top basketball programs, but it would be derelict not to note that all of the schools winning 3 or more championships in the past 40 years have a history of mediocre to poor football programs in those same 40 years:
Duke (5 titles)
UConn (4 titles)
North Carolina (4 titles)
Villanova (3 titles)
Louisville (3 titles)
Kansas (3 titles)
Kentucky (3 titles)
That’s a total of 25 basketball championships by schools with minimal to no success in big time football. I see no correlation between success in big time football and big time basketball.
