Mar. 14—MORGANTOWN — There should be no doubt that Brett Yormark isn’t the right guy to have in charge of the Big 12 Conference.
Outside of not making a real push to get Gonzaga into the league as a basketball member, every move Yormark’s made has gone well beyond simply stabilizing the Big 12.
Yet, when it comes to the NCAA men’s basketball tournament, someone needs to tell Yormark to stay on the sidelines.
“I’m in favor of expansion to 76, ” Yormark said, as the Big 12 men’s tournament was getting underway at the T-Mobile Center in Kansas City, Mo. “I think that’s the right number.”
Mr. Yormark, your right number couldn’t be more off the mark.
To be fair, Yormark is not alone in the boat for expansion. That’s been the speculation ever since 2016, when the NCAA extended its contract with CBS and Turner Broadcasting to televise the tournament through 2032.
That extension, by the way, was worth $8 billion to the NCAA and its member schools.
And we do live in a time when the major TV networks and streaming services are dishing out a king’s ransom for the right to broadcast live sports.
Or maybe you didn’t hear about the 11-year, $76 billion deal the NBA recently signed with ESPN /ABC, NBC and Amazon that begins next season.
So, I totally get what Yormark is putting out there. Expanding the tournament to 76 teams would essentially mean eight play-in games rather than the current four.
That’s four extra games for either CBS or one of the Turner networks to televise with the idea that those games would bring in extra money to spread out to the schools on top of the $8 billion.
It truly makes sense, except there’s one giant problem that Yormark and any other Power Five commissioner who agrees with him isn’t thinking of: You guys don’t have a good enough product to sell for expansion.
The NBA has LeBron James and Kevin Durant. The NFL has the most popular live-sports product on the planet.
The popularity that comes with college football makes all the sense in the world as to why ESPN would pay $7.8 billion over six years to televise the College Football Playoff, not to mention the other billions it shells out to the major conferences to broadcast regular-season games.
Yes, the NCAA men’s basketball tournament is “March Madness ” as an overall brand. There was a time when that overall brand was good enough to captivate national attention.
Maybe it still does to a degree, but the individual products that make up that overall brand—men’s college hoops teams—are watered down and severely diluted from what they once were.
We’ll give you an example. If this year’s tournament was expanded to 76 teams, one of those extra games you might be able to watch would be Boise State vs. Wake Forest.
It’s a near guarantee you can’t name a single player from either one of those teams. There’s about a 90 % chance you couldn’t name the head coach at either one of those schools.
OK, we’ll ask you an easier one: Who is the leading scorer in all of college basketball right now ?
That shouldn’t be difficult at all, but it’s likely that only fans who focus on Big East basketball know the answer is Villanova’s Eric Dixon.
There are two major problems with the men’s college basketball product. The first is a combination of the one-and-done rule and rampant transferring.
Players come and go, and rosters have to be rebuilt almost from scratch every season.
I’m not arguing the athletes shouldn’t have that right, but it does come at a cost.
Which leads to the second problem. There are ma and pa restaurants out there with better marketing strategies than what’s provided for men’s college basketball.
Conferences attempt to care about marketing their teams and players through preseason media days that aren’t very well attended anymore.
National sports talk shows rarely mention college basketball until the conference tournaments begin.
ESPN’s version of College Gameday for college basketball is a joke compared to its football brethren.
It’s basically left up to each individual school to market their teams and players, and, well, most schools out there don’t offer up the level of access to the media they once did.
It all adds up to one major identity problem, as in men’s college hoops really has no national identity.
Sure, you watch and follow the home team, but the executives at those TV networks who Yormark and Co. want to squeeze more money out of need you to do more than watch the home team.
Otherwise, what exactly would they be paying for ?
So, Mr. Yormark, we urge you to stop this nonsense of expanding the NCAA tournament.
While you may be seeing dollar signs, someone needs to tell you that you are blinded to the possibility of killing off the true spirit of March Madness.
