College basketball thread
doubledragon
Posts: 23,269 ✭✭✭✭✭
in Sports Talk
March Madness is quickly approaching, starting this thread just in case anyone remembers that college basketball does still exist and would like to discuss it heading into tournament time. 
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No comments yet? This is unacceptable. I feel it is my job, no it's my duty, to force the forum into becoming a college basketball fan, not only a fan, but a hardcore fan, that watches every single college basketball game possible on TV. Now get out there, turn on your television, distract the free throw shooter, and watch the dang game!
No one's going to watch college basketball today? Ok, fine, but just remember to this, it's going to be a long NFL off-season!
It is interesting that college hoops has lost its appeal over the past 10-20 years (except for the National Tournament in March and early April each year).
It used to be that regular season college hoops drew lots of attention from the general public.
Once the rules changed to allow for high school graduates go straight into the NBA (i.e. Lebron James and many others); and thereafter changed again to allow high school players go into the NBA the year after the graduated (resulting in the 1 year in college and done system now in effect); and once minor league (G-League in the US and overseas league) pro hoops developed to the point where many high school graduates never enroll in college viewership changed.
I used to follow college hoops every season. I enjoyed watching players stay 3 or 4 years at the same school. The constant turnover of players on rosters (with some players attending their freshman year classes only until the schools regular season ends; and then leaving school forever to start their pro basketball career) caused me to lose interest. Now I check out the March Madness brackets, watch a couple of the first and second round games, then maybe watch the title game.
One thing that these changes have caused is the lowering of the quality of play at the traditional powerhouse teams (i.e. Kansas, Duke, UNC, Kentucky, etc.) and the rise in the quality of play at mid major schools. This makes for more early round upsets in the national tournament (16 seeds beating 1 seeds and 15 seeds beating 2 seeds). There are more Cinderella stories to promote to the general public.
Well said, I certainly miss the days when teams stayed together for multiple seasons. I don't watch during the regular season, I usually start watching in mid to late February and then the conference tournaments and March Madness are always fun.