Eddie Pells
If the latest spam of conference reorganization in college sports was thought to spell doom for the Big 12 or Pac-12, or whatever conference, someone forgot to tell basketball coaches.
In college hoops, where virtually all success is measured by how well teams and meetings perform in March Madness, the 2022-23 campaign looks like business as usual.
A football-led reorganization joins a rapidly expanding transfer portal, and the newly discovered slightly regulated ability for players to make money from celebrities has allowed the postseason NCAA tournaments, men and women, to compete for the first time ever. More than that, it’s the glue that holds together the increasingly fragmented fabric of college sports.
“Ultimately, you’re going to play in the tournament,” Syracuse coach Jim Boheim recently said when summing up the collegiate basketball season. “If you can’t play in tournaments, you’re no good.”
In football, the conference title is the most direct route to one of the few coveted spots in the playoffs, even after the announcement that the postseason will expand to 12 teams by 2026.
In basketball, whether a team wins the conference regular season title, the conference tournament title, or no conference title at all has little bearing on what the final verdict will be. Of the last 10 national champions, he has won only 3 of his tournaments in the conference. For example, few people think of St. Peter’s as the MAAC champion he is, but anyone who follows the sport knows that the Peacocks advanced to last year’s Elite Eight.
The same is true whether the team is from the West Coast Conference (where Gonzaga is a powerhouse every year) or the Big 12 or Pac-12. Bring your team to a new meeting.
Last summer, Texas and Oklahoma announced they were leaving the Big 12 to join the SEC. This summer, UCLA and Southern California announced they would leave the Pac-12 and move to the Big Ten.
Shortly after the Big Ten expansion was announced, the conference split the seven-year media rights deal for more than $7 billion. The SEC plans to make about $7 billion over the next decade. Last weekend, the Big 12 agreed to a six-year extension of his media rights worth more than $2 billion from 2030 to his 31st.
With only one or two teams from each conference, an expanded soccer playoff could be worth more than $2 billion in media rights for 11 games. That’s about double the annual value of basketball rights (and they don’t get distributed to many conferences and programs).
It explains the reason for the move, but doesn’t necessarily mark the end of the Big 12 or Pac-12.
A lot of it is thanks to March Madness. Placing little guys against behemoths in a 68-team bracket each season remains a cleverly simple idea. This is what left basketball profitable, at least on the court, despite steady changes in the business model.
Baylor coach Scott Drew said, “You don’t need football to make a good basketball program. It helps financially. People want a good football program to go watch and support, so it’s It helps with recruiting…but you can do without it.It’s been proven.”
In fact, the Big 12 are heading into the 2022-23 season with the strength of the last two National Champions (Kansas and Baylor), Texas’ stacked teams (still in the league now), a strong TCU team, and Kansas. A longtime contender for states and West Virginia. As of last week, he had three football teams in the AP Top 25 in the conference.
And soon coming to the Big 12 after the latest reorganization is complete are basketball brand names Cincinnati and Houston. The Cougars were in the Final Four two seasons ago.
The depth of Pac-12 isn’t the same, but even after losing two SoCal teams, Arizona has a longtime powerhouse, Oregon has a 21st century Goliath, and Colorado has a mini renaissance. Have at least one program to enjoy. Neither Arizona nor Colorado have been football powerhouses for decades.
CU Coach Tad Boyle said: “Because the University of Colorado is a great academic institution. We have a great brand name.”
It’s a brand name that’s appeared in the bracket in 5 of the last 10 tournaments.It’s nothing like North Carolina or the Duke, but it’s one of the things that keeps it relevant even in an era when football programs are struggling to win 13 times. Enough for the last three and a half seasons.
This is 13 more wins than Gonzaga because he doesn’t play football.
Zag opens yet another season as a favorite to make the Final Four. A few years ago, when the football-playing Mountain He West Conference was knocking on his door many times, Gonzaga signed him to the WCC. NCAA Tournament earnings are big based on their performance in March.
“I felt like the more I progressed, the bigger the amount should be,” said then-athletic director Mike Ross.
Unlike soccer where Alabama, Georgia, and LSU are inherently tied to the SEC and have all the advantages the conference offers on the ballpark, when people think of “Duke,” “Kansas,” and “Gonzaga.” , they don’t think much about conferences. .
Unlike football, where a win in a game of Auburn vs. Alabama, Ohio State vs. Michigan, Texas vs. Oklahoma, or UCLA vs. USC can define a program’s season regardless of the postseason, regular season meetings do not include such It is seldom accompanied by meaning. At basketball outside Tobacco Road.
No one articulates it better than Boeheim, a 47-year coaching veteran who moved the program from the Big East to the ACC in 2013. They never won a regular season or conference tournament title.
So, like other college coaches, Boheim has been busy preparing for the team’s opener in November, but that’s not the real focus of his season.
“I’ll take the Sweet 16,” he said, when he finished sixth in the ACC. “Would you like to do better in the regular season? Sure. But every year, we did very well in the tournament.”
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AP Sports writers Ralph Russo and Pat Graham contributed to this report.
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AP College Basketball: https://apnews.com/hub/college-basketball and https://apnews.com/hub/ap-top-25-college-basketball-poll and https://twitter.com/AP_Top25
