‘An empty ball is not going to be fun’
CINDERELLA TEAMS ARE GETTING WRITTEN OUT OF THE MARCH MADNESS STORY
College basketball undergoes constant evolution, a form of Darwinism that can turn well-established fixtures into long-forgotten relics. The four-year superstar went the way of the dodo. The notion of geographical alignment of conferences vanished. Playing the Final Four in an actual basketball gym grew quaint. If current trends continue apace, a quintessential slice of college hoops may join the endangered list: the mid- major at- large NCAA tournament berth.
“I 100-per-cent think midmajor teams getting at-large berths is not only diminishing, but what is it when we have a creature that’s about to die?” Southern Illinois coach Barry Hinson said. “It’s on life support. It’s getting ready to be an extinct species.”
As lower- tier conference t ournaments begin next week, almost every midmajor team faces grim and pressurized circumstances: Win the tournament and its automatic berth into the 68-team NCAA field, or plan on spending March Madness at the National Invitation Tournament.
The NCAA bracket will still be loaded with mid-major teams who win automatic berths via their conference tournaments. But the dearth of at- large berths will alter the feel and the possibilities of the tournament. Watching an Illinois State try to topple a power conference opponent has been part of the character and, for many fans, appeal of the NCAA tournament more so than, say, a first- round matchup between Minnesota and Texas Tech.
“The Wichita States, the George Masons, the VCUs — these are the teams that make the tournament fun,” Hinson said. “If we take that away, then our greed is going to overtake. And we’re not going to have a tournament that’s popular. The tournament is made on Cinderella, and when there’s no Cinderella anymore, you’re just going to have an empty ball, and it’s not going to be fun.”
In the zero- sum game of NCAA tournament berths, inequality between the haves and have- nots appears to be growing. In 2006, George Mason advanced to the Final Four out of the Colonial Athletic Association. Over the next seven seasons, Butler, VCU and Wichita State followed suit from mid- major conferences. While Butler won the Horizon League to earn its berths in the seasons it advanced to consecutive national title games, Mason, VCU and Wichita all earned at- large berths, seeded between ninth and 11th.
As TV rights deals have boomed, the majority of the money has flowed into the coffers of major conferences, which amplifies their resource advantages. An even more insidious culprit may be realignment, which has sapped opportunities from mid- major conferences in both obvious and subtle ways.
The effects surfaced last March in stark fashion. If you group the American Athletic Conference and the Atlantic 10 among power conferences, Wichita State was the only mid-major team to earn one of 36 at-large berths.
This season, undefeated, top-ranked Gonzaga and No. 20 Saint Mary’s of the West Coast Conference should be locks to make the field. While Middle Tennessee State of Conference USA and No. 25 Wichita State and Illinois State from the Missouri Valley Conference, to name three, have resumés the committee will have to consider, it’s possible this year’s bracket again will yield just one mid-major at-large entrant.
“The eye of the needle for teams outside the power conferences is getting narrower and narrower,” Horizon League commissioner Jonathan LeCrone said.
Mid- majors must deal with the issues they have always faced: the difficulty ( if not impossibility) of scheduling home games with power teams who make too much money off home games to sacrifice them; the resource imbalance; the perception battle. Conference realignment may be the most important factor in the recent plunge in at-large teams.
Having been raided itself by the ACC, the Big East s urvived by plundering other conferences in 2013. Creighton, Butler and Xavier jumped to the new Big East from, respectively, the Missouri Valley, Horizon and Atlantic 10. Creighton’s departure provides a keen example of how damaging losing just one school could be.
One impact of Creighton’s absence is obvious: It meant the Missouri Valley had one less well- established program capable of contending for an at- large berth most every season. It also meant potential contenders lost two chances every season to notch an impressive victory, two crucial opportunities to burnish their case.
THE TOURNAMENT IS MADE ON CINDERELLA.