I hear it time after time: “College basketball’s regular season is irrelevant” or “Nothing matters until March”. Though I am usually successful in restraining myself from the onslaught of dispute I would like to unleash in response, the assertion continues to bother me. Sure, March Madness is fun, but such fun takes nothing away from the importance of the conference schedule. So please don’t change the tournament, because it is great as it is. As any coach or player would tell you, those advocating for such a change on the grounds that it renders the regular season irrelevant are completely off base.
In fact, I would argue that conference titles mean more to those involved than perhaps even a trip to the Final Four. Think about it: A conference title represents an achievement spanning more than two months and 18 grueling games, each played against a familiar and rivaled foe. On the other hand, reaching the Final Four simply requires a four-game stretch of good play. Two weeks of hot shooting and even a mediocre team can find itself at the “peak” of collegiate basketball.
Our collective obsession with Championships blinds us to what victory truly represents. The team that wins the World Series isn’t the best team in baseball, just the hottest. The Super Bowl champion often catches fire late in December and uses that momentum to knock off teams who months earlier would have beaten them to a pulp. I don’t mean to take anything away from the accomplishment of winning a Super Bowl, a World Series, or an NCAA Tournament title, but we should put these accomplishments into perspective before we decide to radically alter the environment in which they are won and lost.
The 2012-2013 college basketball season has been anything but a bore. Between half-court shots to keep upset hopes alive and last-second inbounds plays to topple the nation’s #1 team, there has been plenty of play worth watching in the Big Ten alone. Add to that buzzer shots in Los Angeles, miracles in Indianapolis, and five overtimes in South Bend and you have quite an array of interesting contests with significant implications.
Now you might argue that despite the drama, nothing of relevance or consequence comes out of such regular season contests. But this statement treats conference titles as mere pathways to the ultimate prize, an assertion that simply doesn’t match reality. Perhaps they don’t receive the national attention of the NCAA Tournament, but conference titles do matter. They matter a lot.
The desire to boil a season down to a single championship is uniquely American. European soccer clubs compete on multiple levels, contending in a single season for league, cup, and European championships. Each of these titles is a trophy on the mantle, a goal in and of itself for the club rather than merely a steppingstone to the ultimate prize. “Playoffs” are a foreign word and a late season contest for the Premier League lead is just as hotly contested as a Champions League semifinal match.
I don’t have an answer for why we as Americans are obsessed with finding a solo champion everywhere we go. Maybe it is the same reason we cant live without playoffs and wont accept mainstream sports that allow for a game to end in draw. As a society, we love finality.
But in college basketball, even in the regular season, there is finality. Perhaps conference regular seasons lack a “Championship Game” (save for the Ivy League tiebreak- they have it right), but what they lack in singular finality they more than make up for in drama and value. Conference champions are generally the best team in their league, not just the hottest at the moment. Given that fact, I would argue that a Big Ten or SEC title means a lot more than an NCAA title banner.
Some argue a return to the more selective roots of the NCAA Tournament, confining invitations perhaps not just to conference champions (as was the case pre-1975) but at least to something closer to 16 or 32 teams than the current 68. This, proponents argue, would make the regular season relevant.
Would shrinking the NCAA Tournament field increase the importance of the regular season? Yes. But it doesn’t need any more importance than it already has, especially at the expense of the excitement that the Tournament’s opening rounds currently provides. The first two full days of NCAA play are arguably the best days of the year for the American sports fan and shrinking the field would no doubt change that.
If the regular season were so irrelevant, explain the jubilation of Wisconsin’s win over Michigan, the heartbreak on the faces of Ohio State players after losing at home to Indiana, or the frustration shown by a Louisville team in a free fall from #1 in the nation to the middle of the Big East standings.
Ohio State, Michigan, and Louisville will all be in the NCAA Tournament regardless of how the rest of the regular season plays out for them. But they value conference championships and the accomplishment they represent, value enough to react with such emotion to losses that put such title hopes in significant jeopardy.
College basketball’s regular season is plenty relevant. The NCAA Tournament is great, but it is not the only title that top programs seek at the start of the year. Attempting to infuse unnecessary value to an already important part of the year threatens to temper the “madness” that makes the month of March so great.
So on behalf of the regular season, I say to you that titles are titles. We have ours and you have yours. Don’t mess with what works.
