It’s late March, which means it’s time for the NCAA basketball championships, but I find myself in the very odd position of not really caring about college basketball this year. Incredibly, I’ve actually watched more NBA games this season than I have college games, something that never would’ve happened even five years ago. And yet…
The shift here is largely due to the kids, in both directions. I tend not to watch any sports on TV these days, because the kids are usually either taking up the good tv-watching seats in the living room, or they’re supposed to be doing homework, in which case having the TV on is an unwanted distraction. The little bit of basketball I have watched has been NBA basketball because The Pip is a big fan of Giannis Antetokounmpo and the Milwaukee Bucks, and on the rare occasions when they’re on national TV before his bedtime, we’ll throw the game on.
There’s also a big piece of this that’s down to changes in the sport itself, though, and its place in the larger landscape. In a bunch of ways, college basketball is no longer the game I used to obsess over, and that’s made it easier to drop it down the priority queue.
Most of the negative changes have to do with money. The biggest of these are actually due to college football, a sport I’ve never cared for, but that represents the real cash cow for major programs and television networks. This has led to a mad reshuffling of conference affiliations as the very top football schools scramble to get into one of a couple of supergroups so as to keep more of that money for themselves. But this has destroyed the traditional rivalries that were responsible for a lot of the charm of college sports in general, and basketball specifically. Syracuse (my original college basketball affiliation) and Georgetown had a long and epic rivalry, so those games meant something even if they weren’t competing for the Big East title; now they play a meaningless pre-season game if they play at all. Maryland (my second college basketball team) spent decades building up history with other schools in the ACC, all of which was thrown in the trash when they moved to the Big Ten for football. There’s nothing in that conference that comes close to the heights of Duke or UNC coming to play in Cole Field House.
The other big change has been the absolute dominance of the “one and done” philosophy, where the very top high school players semi-grudgingly play in college for a single season before decamping for the NBA. This means there’s next to no continuity in the very top programs— every year, they’re running out teams featuring three frosh who weren’t with the team the previous season, and won’t be there the next.
Not only does this make it hard to build up any kind of relationship to the players, it also kills a lot of what I appreciated about the game. The best feature of college basketball, and what made me prefer it to the NBA, used to be the diversity of approaches. You had big-name coaches at a variety of schools with radically different philosophies of the game— some coaches going with an up-tempo full-court press kind of game, while others would actively try to slow the game down. You would see a wide range of different zone defenses, and wildly different approaches to offense.
The one-and-done era has basically killed that, because of the (at least perceived) need to let those one-year rental players showcase their individual skills, so as to improve their standing for the NBA draft. Which has led to a massive homogenization of the game— in recent years, almost every team is doing exactly the same things that revolve around trying to set up their stars, and it’s boring.
It’s a bit ironic that the one-and-done rule, which was supposed to save the sport by keeping the top NBA talent in college at least briefly, has actually led to the actualization of the long-time NBA-fan critique that college hoops is second-rate because they’re just doing the same things as NBA players, only not as well. That used to be a stupid criticism— the whole point of college hoops was that they weren’t all playing the same NBA style, but were showing more of the range of what basketball can be. When I’ve watched college games in more recent years, though, it’s looked to be much more on the mark— games between big-name programs with rosters full of future NBA players look exactly like games between the lousy NBA teams those players will be drafted by the next year. It’s a bunch of half-assed man-to-man defense, and guys standing around waiting their turn to “create their own shot” on offense.
(I will admit that the very best NBA teams— Denver now, Golden State at their peak— play some amazing basketball, with guys cutting and moving the ball in ways that are amazing. The median NBA game is pretty boring, though, and games between bad teams are just disgusting. Yeah, you get the occasional amazing athletic feat, but I want to see basketball, not just a dunk contest or a game of HORSE.)
The NCAA Tournament is the annual last gasp of what used to be great about college basketball, which is watching a bunch of players who are individually overmatched sum to more than their parts and take down a team with superior physical gifts but less knowledge of the game. That game Thursday night when a super-senior rained in ten threes and Oakland held on to knock off Kentucky was a beautiful sight. There’s not nearly enough of that in the game any more, though, which makes it easy to turn the TV off and go do something else instead.
This is a little self-indulgent, but, you know, it’s a blog. And I didn’t feel like writing about weightier topics about academia and politics and all that stuff. Here’s a button if you either like this or want to see something else at a later date:
And if you feel so moved, the comments will be open:
I actually really love reading about basketball & would love to read more from you on the topic in the future! Didn't seem self-indulgent at all.
I have never been a basketball fan, but I remember watching college games in Lasell gym (mid 70's) - packed into the 2nd floor running track looking straight down on the court. The place was a deafening wall of noise, intimidating the opposition. Plus, knowing a few of the players made it fun. That's how I remember college b-ball.