Earlier start won’t solve hoops issues
College basketball might be starting its season sooner rather than later — which means the sport’s top influencers are thinking in the wrong direction.
On the one hand, it’s encouraging to see its power brokers admitting one of the sport’s biggest flaws: the lack of oomph at the start of the regular season.
But Wednesday’s proposal put forward by the Division I men’s basketball oversight committee suggests moving up the uniform start of the regular season to the second Tuesday of November — three days earlier than the current date. This shows that while the sport’s leaders can identify one of its biggest problems, they haven’t reasoned out its causes.
College basketball’s visibility problem will not be fixed by overlapping more with college football and the NFL but by overlapping less. College football’s season extends into mid- January with its four- team College Football Playoff. The NFL — whose reign remains untouch- able — dominates sports coverage and viewership through to the Super Bowl in early February.
Over the last few years, it has only gotten harder for college basketball to find what its leaders like to refer to as “exclusive windows,” gaps in the sports schedule they can use to highlight premier matchups. A few marquee non- conference games — the Champions Classic, the Big Ten/ ACC Challenge and one- off intersectional battles — do stand out in November and December. But for the most part, the sport doesn’t resonate much beyond its die- hard fans at that time of year. ( There’s a reason the Big 12 and Southeastern Conference moved their Challenge to late January — and its viewership numbers reflect the smart decision to do so.)
Starting uniformly on a weekday is not a bad idea. Spreading out games to decompress the schedule is also not, on face value, a bad idea. But the discussion points put out Wednesday suggest the sport wishes to increase attention and excitement surrounding the start of the season — an admirable goal that can be achieved best by doing exactly the opposite of what is proposed.
Very little of what occurs before the start of the Thanksgiving holiday tournaments registers beyond core fans, and the sport takes off as college football enters its hiatus before bowl games.
Sure, there would be questions about TV inventory and a loss of income tied to home games if the season were to shorten and start a few weeks later. Or the season could remain the same length and the postseason could go deeper into April — it’s foolish to think fans would stop watching March Madness if the tournament began or stretched past the Masters and into the start of the baseball season. The issue of venue availability that emerges with the start of the NBA and NHL playoffs is legitimate, however.
These are the questions and time slots college basketball’s leaders should be looking at, not a Tuesday in November that will keep and potentially exacerbate the problems that dog the sport during the first half of its season.