Not exactly the greatest way to restart covering college basketball, but here we are posting what is peak offseason content. Welcome! I appreciate you giving me the time to be vain, allowing me to believe the thoughts I scribble from heron out are valuable enough to be read by other people.
Unless you’re a fan of a blue-blood program, or only consume college hoops to keep up with the NBA Draft, the way the sport is covered and consumed is wonky.
No matter the game, the talking points on social media and broadcasts are seldom about actual college basketball (with some exceptions). It’s about off-the-court tomfoolery, NBA Draft stocks, and/or how Team-X’s goal is the Final Four or bust.
It’s a weird disease that came when all sports stopped being regional. (Allegedly) Al Gore’s internet was created, the world became a lot smaller, “coercing” leagues to be covered in an increasingly national and streamlined way.
Need to chase that traffic, baby!
Unintentionally, it’s caused everything to be hyperbolic. Conference titles are no longer a prized treasure. Winning out of conference, while valuable for an NCAA Tournament resume, doesn’t get nearly as much pub as whoever the hot freshman of the season is. After all, need #TAEKS on his NBA Draft stock in fucking November, right?
This isn’t the fans’ fault, either. Most college basketball fans watch the sport to enjoy, you know, the actual sport. Furthermore, the majority of die-hard fanatics are not losing sleep over Final Four or bust programs. The majority of us root for teams earning a pair of dancing slippers in cycles… or even worse, teams we’d orgasm over if they finished .500 in conference play.
GO ST. JOHN’S! I love you, Mike Anderson!
It’s hard to come back from this. To reset how we consume what’s presented to us, as we can’t impel ESPN or the like from covering the sport differently. If they — or any other outlet for that matter — focus on just the blue-bloods, NBA Draft prospects, and hot-take narratives, it’s not as if we get a vote to get more digital content on Fordham.
What we can do is circle the wagons. Rally around each other in whatever communities we belong to; not allowing the tomfoolery most of us are OK with (provided it’s packaged in small doses), but can’t stand when it’s all we hear, read and see.
Hooray, redundancy in verbiage?
Sadly, that initiative is forced upon the fans. It resides within the aforementioned hard reboot of expectations. To allow room for program failure. To not buy in on every piece on why Coach-Y is sitting on the hot-seat since he only won three out of seven at a program that ought to be content with a record of that sort.
Here’s looking at you UNLV and how poorly you treated Marvin Menzies. It’ll still probably work out for you in the end, but bluh. Yeah. That’s my take on running off a coach who had a solid record — BLUH!
Still, imagine this world. You’re a fan of a low to mid-major, or one in a power conference that’s not exactly an eater of worlds, and your team is covered in terms relative to only them. For your University of Broken Dreams, it isn’t Final Four or bust. Hell, it doesn’t even need to be NCAA Tournament or trash. You don’t even need an NBA-level player on your roster! It can be about the development of the program, players and coaching staff.
Sure, this still wouldn’t apply for the top five percent of programs in the country; though national coverage tilting its entire model to catering to the lowest percentage seems backward to the point it won’t allow the sport to evolve.
Ugh, the fucking blight that is national media.
There’s always going to be a place to discuss NBA Draft prospects, the tropes, and blue-blood programs. But if we want the sport to grow, we need it to take a step back first. To minimize its larger coverage to make certain it’s being properly handled everywhere else first.
Losing some coverage, Duke, UNC, etc., they’ll all be fine, I promise! Coach K isn’t exactly hurting for media members getting hard-ons when talking about him.
It’s imperative to gift ho-hum teams as much attention on broadcasts as their “bigger draw” counterpart.
I mean, imagine turning on Villanova vs DePaul, then actually finding out tangible information about the Blue Demons’ program and players, and not just hearing the same Jay Wright talking points over and over… and over.
We get it. He truly is that fucking handsome!
The return to a more regionalized form is something I think about often. A column I once wrote — I’d link to it but the site is shuttered and the post is lost to the great internet void — was about how true low majors shouldn’t bother competing with mids. Instead of following the same routine as everyone else, a good league like the AEC should find a market to exploit. My recommendation was to become THE LEAGUE that aired in-conference games on Tuesday and Wednesday afternoons.
Matinee hoops from 12-4 Eastern on some random workdays in February? Sign me up!
Of course, the potential viewing audience would be small, as most normal members of our species are out earning a living. However, there’s still a key demographic who would consume it — those who love getting in the afternoon sweats with a little (legal?) gambling.
As a bonus, there would be zero competition. The AEC — or a similar-sized league — has a hard enough time getting eyeballs when competing against the big leagues at 7 Eastern. Only those who love mid-major hoops more than their mother are watching Vermont vs Albany when Duke vs UNC is on.
On a Wednesday at noon, leading into Stony Brook vs Vermont at 2:00, it would be a great showcase for the players, coaches and programs. To be the only entertainment in town. To be, since there’s zero sportsball happening elsewhere, the talking point for a few hours without the hassle of personalities trying to highjack the experience from those who want to consume college basketball on college basketball’s terms.
Perhaps my idea is awful; although it remains better than banging our heads off walls, listening to the same stuff about the same 10 programs, coaches and rotating freshmen season after season.
Unlike most other sports, college basketball’s appeal has as much to do with what’s happening off the hardwood as it does with what’s going on it. To build these stories, these tangible and real entities fans can get emotionally invested in, they need to know about stuff outside the few-program-bubble nearly every outlet and network in the country claim people only care about.
That’s on those places, but we can still help each other on social media, blog posts, and the like.
Plus, that shitty talking point is simply untrue. Naturally, there’s a lot of interest in Duke, UCLA, etc. And they should all still get their fair share of coverage. But as someone who covered the sport for over a decade, my most read pieces were always on the smaller programs. There’s interest in them. People want to know more about schools like Belmont. By week two of the season, if not sooner, they already know next to everything about Kansas. We get it, Bill Self is good at his job!
College basketball, by no means, is oversaturated with coverage, but the few teams that get it from the biggest platforms are. Mind you, this is happening while the other 300-plus are interchangeable commodities to those who should do more to amplify their stories.
Nevertheless, returning to a regionalized way of viewing the sport — from valuing league wins, conference titles, simple program growth and/or how they are doing compared against state rivals — doesn’t make it a perfect world for fans, but it’s sure as shit better than what we have now.
Now, if you don’t mind, time to write my way-too-early 2047 NBA Mock Draft post. The people are clamoring for it.
Mark Emmert Extension - The Human Shield
Buried in an incredibly late press release, riddled in scandal NCAA main-man Mark Emmert received an extension after a unanimous vote was made by the Board of Governors.
As soon as the news was made public, the takes came in. People were shocked and magically appalled that an organization with a history of exploiting labor, operating in contradictory fashion, and never having its pulse on the landscape of anything, would give this man an extension.
Tickle me not shocked.
What was funny, though, was the free passes given around. Some didn’t want us to blame the Board of Governors, made up mostly of university presidents, since they have more important things to do than oversee a billion-dollar organization they’re literally tasked with overseeing.
We couldn’t blame athletic directors, either. You see, they began texting — TEXTING I FUCKING TELL YOU! — media members to tell everyone how befuddled they were that the people they have direct contact with would vote to keep Emmert in power.
In power to… represent the best interests of the colleges the NCAA represents.
Yes. In any other profession, Emmert would be gone the way of the dinosaurs. He’s inept, coming off numerous poorly handled (to the point of medically dangerous) events, and probably has a popularity ranking below Jake Paul.
But that’s the point. He’s here to take daggers for university presidents, athletic directors, and coaches. He’s not in his position to serve student-athletes, the general public, or anyone else.
And our man Marky Mark Emmert is doing a tremendous job at consuming the heat so no one else has to. Of course he got the unanimous vote.
Yes. Schools Can Do More!
We’re circling back a bit here. Some of the front parts of this post were inspired by Matt Brown’s podcast on his Extra Points newsletter.
In it, he and his cohost were discussing how smaller programs should invest in certain areas to gain an advantage. One specific area they talked about involved schools improving their overall broadcast coverage.
I am going to oversimplify their point, as you should go listen to the podcast in full, but it basically boiled down to the idea that a school like a Stephen F Austin would benefit greatly if their games on ESPN+ or wherever else didn’t look like it was being filmed by me.
Without deep-diving into, I agree with the sentiment. My earlier point about conferences finding market value in areas not explored applies to schools as well. If a small program — regardless of sport — gave consumers a better quality program, we’d be more inclined to watch.
I still believe, though, the coverage end of this matters. If ESPN — again, I only use them as an example since they’re the biggest network — buys up the FBS playoffs, but buries the games anywhere but on their main network, it’s going to be hard for those sports and programs to grow no matter how innovative everyone else gets.
Joseph Nardone covered college basketball for nearly a decade at various outlets. He’s now writing fiction because he’s a fucking idiot and a glutton for punishment. Twitter is @JosephNardone. If you say mean things to him, he’ll just yell at his ceiling.