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Mistake Repeated?
“Those
who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat
it.”
- George Santayana
March 18, 2008
 Once
again, the talking heads at CBS have sat by idly while
all the elements are in place for another Final Four
ratings debacle. As the sport I love begins its annual
championship coronation process, the seeds have been
sown to either produce an epic finale and the
accompanying media bonanza, or a monumental
anti-climax that will leave many sports fans entirely
disinterested on Championship Monday.
Admit it. You are psyched about UNC-UCLA. You can’t
wait for this game - you wish you could fast forward
through the whole darn thing and just get to it
already. The only game that matters. The history. The
legacy. Hansbrough and Love. ACC vs. PAC10. Smith and
Wooden in the stands. The exceptional defense against
the unstoppable offense. Everybody in your pool will
pick one or the other, and the final score tiebreaker
will mean something for once. It will be the greatest
college basketball game since… Ever! And if UNC and
UCLA aren’t playing for the championship… Well, you’re
probably not going to care or watch.
It’s that last part that could create a big, ugly
problem for college basketball. The elephant in the
room, feasting and growing by the day, is that the
nation cares about UNC-UCLA, but doesn’t care nearly
as much about any other championship game combination.
Maybe the powers that be will get their wish – it
happened 3 years ago when Illinois and North Carolina
squared off in the game everyone wanted to see (though
not before an Illini miracle against Arizona and a
phantom travel call for the Heels against Villanova).
But if it doesn’t happen, and if Memphis, or Texas, or
Tennessee, or Wisconsin, or someone out of the blue
like Florida makes it, the national apathy towards the
championship game will crush whatever momentum the
season has generated so far.
This can’t be entirely prevented, but the blow could
have been softened, if the TV media voices were
content to let things play out without selling a game
that may - or may not - happen. Yet, as soon as the
brackets were announced, the national consensus, set
in motion by analysts in the two major college
basketball television outlets was the inevitability of
a tournament dominated by the 1 seeds. Even if this is
entirely true – even if this is what everyone
genuinely feels – this is a terrible sales pitch for
the sport. A one and done single elimination
tournament invariably will produce upsets, and not
just the first weekend. If the sales pitch is parity
and UCLA-UNC plays out, everybody wins. But the pitch
is “expect it”, and too many casual fans will actually
buy in and expect it. If one or both teams lose before
the Final 4, the tournament will lose far too much
star power and hype to attempt to shift the attention
to the remaining teams. Two years ago the sport was
burned when UConn and Duke dominated the rankings all
season, but did not make their Final Four
reservations. Ratings tanked, despite the fact that
the winning Florida team was full of characters,
talent, and human-interest stories. If this was
college football, UCLA and UNC would have been
selected for the title game, and Memphis, Kansas, and
everyone else would get to sit at home and watch. We
certainly don’t want that, do we? But if we have a
tournament, we create the strong possibility that the
most frequently discussed teams simply will not make
it to the end.
College basketball need not look further than the only
other major one-and-done playoff in North American
sports to learn a valuable lesson. It was only a few
short months ago the sports-watching nation was all
but assured of a de facto Super Bowl between New
England and Indianapolis, the winner of which would
celebrate their title with a beat-down of either Green
Bay (America’s QB) or Dallas (America’s Team). In the
end, the NFL was bailed out by the NY Giants, whose
location (biggest media market) and human-interest
stories (Eli Manning, regular season game, etc) were
compelling enough to still warrant the interest of the
public. While the game lived up to, even exceeded
expectations, its ratings would have been trumped by
either a Green Bay or Dallas match-up. The NFL can
afford that kind of misstep. Sadly in 2008, college
basketball cannot.
So I implore you, the average fan, to take a chance on
cheering a few teams other than the Bruins and Tar
Heels. Enjoy everything the tournament brings to the
table, and don’t get too upset if your team gets
upset. There are plenty of great potential
championship games, and we should not abandon the
sport if the marquee game never comes to fruition.
When all is said and done, if the marquee game
happens, let us celebrate that it did – against all
odds.
Ehud Knoll is a sfaff writer for collegeinsider.com.
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