What a ****ing snoozer of a tourney. I blame NIL. This is where football is headed.
College basketball is cooked
- Thread starter BlIIlken2
- Start date
Agree 100%. This tourney has been a snooze fest. Last year was boring AF as well.
I was more interested in the Women's tournament for the last few years for obvious reasons. But I remember the Men's first round last year being a chalky snoozefest too, and it didn't start to get interesting until the second round and sweet 16.
All the small schools that used to stay together and develop the chemistry to compete, now get farmed by the big programs, widening the gulf between them.
You have to admit they have some good looking pregame costumes.
It will never be what it once was. That being said I'm enjoying watching it.
If you want chalk, watch the women's tourney. Biggest upset was a 10 over 7.
The mid majors no longer get at large bids. That's where a lot of the upsets came from.
It’ll soon be a two-conference tournament with a few special guests.
College football playoffs this year were much the same. NIL and transfer portal are ruining both sports. I have a feeling if it continues, people will begin tuning out and the money will fall out of sport and a reckoning will happen in the early 2030s and you will see NIL and transfer portal overhauled.
NIL will also start being a struggle for schools who do not have success despite wealth donors showering money at program. It is not a real business. There is no ROI except a title that only one team gets annually….
I still feel like the NCAA almost was intentional on how they are suddenly cool on ridiculous transfers and not really capping or monitoring hard the NIL ridiculousness. A sort of “oh, you want to pay players, fine, **** you. Enjoy the chaos”
NIL will also start being a struggle for schools who do not have success despite wealth donors showering money at program. It is not a real business. There is no ROI except a title that only one team gets annually….
I still feel like the NCAA almost was intentional on how they are suddenly cool on ridiculous transfers and not really capping or monitoring hard the NIL ridiculousness. A sort of “oh, you want to pay players, fine, **** you. Enjoy the chaos”
Damage will be done. Schools will cut sports to the point where they will only offer football, basketball, and maybe one or two other ones that are a "traditional" sport. Like Iowa and PSU will keep wrestling. But there might only be 5 other schools that keep it. If the current administration keeps on the path they are on you have to think that Title IX is on borrowed time as well so there will be women's basketball and maybe volleyball and that'll be it.
I've heard rumblings that baseball is already on the chopping block at Iowa. I'm not sure of the validity of that though because I figured I would have read something about that on this website by now if it were true but last I checked no one was saying anything about it so it could be BS.
Even if they overhaul NIL at that point, I don't know how you get it back.
Alabama needed the refs at the end to beat LITTLE RM, only lost by 9 points. Great game.
I think you underestimate the infatuation college football fans have with their schools/teams. I would bet the farm that viewership numbers will continue to increase as well as the money. College football is a billion dollar industry that isn’t going anywhere. I do agree that NIL will be overhauled as well as the transfer portal. Right now it’s complete anarchy and the big donors will get tired of their investments running to the highest bidder year after year.
Huh? What games are you watching that are boring? We've seen upsets, blowouts, and nail biters just like every other year.
Don't people ever get tired of thinking everything these days sucks? Such a weird take I constantly see.
Don't people ever get tired of thinking everything these days sucks? Such a weird take I constantly see.
Agree with the sentiment but there’s been a couple exciting games. Probably be a lot today
I remember so many times growing up that all of the games were terrible so my friends and I would go out and play ourselves until the next round of games started.
This is what it's always been like.
What tournament are you watching. It has been almost all chalk. You strike me as not a deep thinker so I will remind you that a 10 or 11 seed winning, and there were only a few, are not big upsets. One 12 seed won….against Memphis.
Handful of decent games but not near as in the past and not near as much noise in the 12-15 seed teams.
I think more than that, I think people underestimate how much of the ratings are driven by just a few teams. For the networks who are funding this whole thing, they want those teams to always be at the top. It does nothing for ESPN/Fox to not have OSU, Michigan, Texas, Alabama, to not be as good as possible.
That is the question right there because I agree with everything you said in first sentence but feel that as less and less schools have a legit chance as the deeper funded schools do AND as we all have to deal with brand new football and basketball teams every year, that infatuation by many viewers and lovers of the game will fade fast. Honestly I think the later is more important because it is almost worse than pro sports with no long term contracts. Hard to get passionate about reconstituted teams every year.
This has been a fairly “chalky” tournament so far. Only 5/32 of the teams remaining are double digit seeds. Half of the remaining teams are from the BIG10 or SEC. We are going to see some incredible games the rest of the way. The landscape has shifted and will continue to change. There will still be upsets, but I think this year it is very possible the sweet 16 is completely composed from seeds 1-5. We will see!
Two 12 seeds won...Colorado State upset Memphis, and McNeese beat Clemson. There was also an 11 winning (Drake over Mizzou)
Forgot Clemson game. And Drake and Mizzou not huge upsets. Think the line was 5.5 and I made money on Drake.
It’s still very chalky. I remember tournaments all 4 12 seed win and usually handful of 13-15 seeds pull off an upset. Like I said, 10 and 11 seed upsets are not much different than a 9 beating an 8.
Did enjoy watching 3 of 4 ACC teams go down. Amazing what happened to them as a basketball conference.
Not the best first round I've seen in awhile, but also the first time in several years that all of the top 4 seeds survived the first round.
Can't have great drama in the first round every year unfortunately.
Plenty of good games that you're clearly just not watching. Upsets don't make a tournament any better or worse, that's a weird argument.
Yes...but we had to give all them bids to ESPN's SEC
...which (checks notes) currently has the 4th best winning percentage among major conferences, so far....
BTen: 1.000 8-0
B12: 0.857 6-1
BEast: 0.667 4-2
SEC: 0.571 8-6
(of course, this also implies most ALL the SEC teams got "overseeded" and played lesser opponents than some of these other conferences, and STILL sucked the Big One here)
There were a few close games but to me more than usual were not that great. Speaking of weird, to me taking a simple discussion on how boring the tournament is, and most people here and on other sports forums are siding on an overall boring and chalky first round, and injecting this gem “Don't people ever get tired of thinking everything these days sucks? ” is weird.
Plenty of info out there about how NIL and portal are making college football basketball and football more bland and we are seeing it. And more people than not found the college football playoffs this year and this first round this year boring and chalky.
I'm in a Survivor pool so I don't watch the team I select, but I agree that there have been some good games. Also....
While I agree that this year had a lot less in the way of first round upsets, what it lacked was the 3 & 4 seeds losing that often happens, and sometimes a 2 getting shocked. 1 seeds almost never lose in the first round; this is the 40th year of 64 (now more) teams. In that time, #1 seeds are 158-2. The two losses were Virginia falling to UMBC in 2018, and Purdue losing to Fairleigh Dickinson in 2023. Interestingly, Virginia just hired as their new head coach the guy who was coaching UMBC when they pulled off the first-ever 16 over 1 upset.
I saw earlier this was just the 6th time since the field expanded to 64 that all top 4 seeds advanced.
So this is likely to be just a statistically anomalous year.
I guess that is the question. Is it anomalous or a sign of the new times due to NIL and transfer portal rules. Sadly I think the later given the SEC….looks at notes….got 14 teams in while ACC got 4. BIG and SEC had 1/3 of the teams. Money matters.
We've seen that periodically where one conference gets too many bids just based on the reported "strength" of that conference during the year.
The idea that 14/16 were all tourney worthy is ridiculous tho.
Many of the first round games aren’t even remotely competitive. This weekend has featured victory margins of 69 (giggity), 61, 60, 52, 46, 38, and 35 (twice).
What was the point of even playing those games? They should trim the women’s tournament down to 48 or even 32 teams.
It would almost be worth having play-in games for mid-majors. That's where the huge discrepancy is. Locally, Green Bay wins their league every year, always has a gaudy record, gets an 11 or 12 seed, & loses by double digits. Richmond & South Dakota St won their games, & it looks like the 20+ other mid majors all lost in uncompetitve games.
Tourney needs to be overhauled.
Let a few upper seeds have byes
Let more mid-majors in
SEC was vastly overrated, and letting a half dozen of their teams in w/ sub-.500 conference records was BS.
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