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College Hoops: Television and dollars has the season starting earlier and running later, and it needs to change
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Published: November 22, 2009
If college basketball printed everyone's calendar, the Rose Bowl would kick off on Christmas Eve and Daytona would run the Fourth of July race on Memorial Day.
If college basketball printed everyone's calendar, the Masters wouldn't really begin until the front nine on Friday and Amen Corner would be renamed Let Us Pray.
It's not that NCAA basketball merely jumps the gun. NCAA basketball jumps the gun and the holster. Any year now, the college game will beat the NBA to the punch and ESPN will beat the promotional drum to shreds. Got any ear plugs?
There's no sane reason why North Carolina should open on Nov. 9, five days after the Yankees won the World Series.
There's no sane reason why Duke should scratch off on Nov. 13 and downshift after Thanksgiving. Beginning Saturday, the Blue Devils will play four games in 31 days. They have two 10-day lulls in the schedule and, the last time anyone checked, only one exam period.
There's no sane reason why college basketball spends millions on tutors and learning labs unavailable to common students -- straining merely to keep lagging players eligible -- and then subjects the teams to such a commercially driven grind.
Sanity has nothing to do with the schedule. Oliver Purnell, the candid Clemson coach, knows the answer to that riddle. "TV and dollars," Purnell said. "Absolutely."
UNC all over the TV screen
ESPN's networks televised UNC's opener and four of its first five games, with Fox Sports South carrying the other one. The loss to Syracuse on Friday night was the Tar Heels' fifth game.
Before anyone gets the wrong impression, Purnell has no problem with TV, money or the glut of November basketball programming. Unlike some ACC coaches, he likes the current system just fine.
"I think a lot of people watch college basketball and can't wait for it to start," he said. "People are interested. If people weren't interested, they wouldn't be doing it."
Duke's Mike Krzyzewski, Carolina's Roy Williams and Wake Forest's Dino Gaudio seem interested in changing the format. Instead of starting formal practices around Oct. 15, those coaches have endorsed Nov. 1. They would like to return opening games to Thanksgiving weekend, the traditional date until a flood of tournaments joined the Springfield-Maui-Alaska mix.
"I think all of us cherish our practice time," Gaudio said, "but the season is too long. Basketball encompasses two semesters, with first-semester exams and stuff. It's a long season, and then you throw in the exempt tournaments. To be honest with you, coaches fight to get into them. If you get in an exempt tournament, you can get more wins, which might help you get in the NCAA Tournament. It's a vicious circle."
Teams playing in designated early tournaments wind up with extra games. Duke and Carolina will play 31 games before the ACC Tournament; Clemson, 30. Wake Forest, which isn't competing in an exempt event this season, will play 28.
In January, the NCAA will consider a proposal to cut one game off the schedule. Krzyzewski dismisses the idea as silly because players prefer games over practices and games generate revenues.
Does this make sense?
Instead of delaying practice, the NCAA might lurch in the other direction and allow limited workouts the first two weeks of October. If CBS moves the Final Four and Masters telecasts deeper into April, basketball season could run from Oct. 1 to April 15. That would leave players about 6½ weeks as typical students to go along with 6½ months as athlete-students.
It must make perfect sense to someone.
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