It’s not as if college basketball as a whole needed to fill in the coverage gap that the week leading up to the Final Four presented. Thanks to the exponential growth of the women’s game and some clever ESPN scheduling, along with the now-established layering of the NIT Final Four into a single-city Final Four-ish destination (this year, it’s the compromise site of the 2021 NCAAs, Indianapolis), there was really only today and Wednesday that were devoid of any watchable games. And we somehow survived a previous Monday two weeks ago without a single game, if for no other reason than it was physically impossible for teams who found out their post-season destination (or lack thereof) to get together for even a hastily arranged game, ticket sales be damned.
But nothing screams overload and opportunity, not to mention generational entitlement, more than NIL, and it is with that singular goal in mind that today we get the first of two consecutive Las Vegas-based quadrupleheaders for the qualifying round of what is being dubbed The College Basketball Crown. The Nebraska Cornhuskers are among the 16 schools heading there, so their house organ scribe Evan Bredeson of CORNHUSKERS WIRE attempted to explain it for his fan base:
The tournament is promoted by the Anschultz Entertainment Group and Fox Sports. It will be held at the T-Mobile and MGM Grand Garden Arenas. The 16-team tournament is also breaking ground by awarding Name, Image, and Likeness payments to the winning teams. Nebraska head coach Fred Hoiberg tells Fox Sports that there’s always a benefit to having your team compete for a championship.
“Any time you have a chance to compete for a championship, there definitely is a benefit for your program. Our guys were unanimous about going out and playing, and that is a good sign for everything you have going with the culture of your program when your guys want to keep playing together and compete”.
Hoiberg’s quote has the tone one might expect from a coach of a team that finished in a five-way tie for tenth in the newly expanded Big Ten and a 17-14 record overall. But even that very definition of mediocrity–a .548 winning percentage– places them record-wise in the middle of the College Basketball Crown’s field. Witness the final records–including conference tournament play– of a few other participating teams:
Cincinnati: 18-15 (.545)
Utah: 17-17 (.500)
USC: 16-17 (.485)
DePaul: 14-19 (.424)
Colorado: 14-20 (.412)
Arizona State: 13-19 (.406).
Lucky for Hoiberg he’s drawn the Sun Devils as his first opponent. It’s about the closest thing to a cakewalk he could have hoped for in a field that record-wise looks like a bakery.
Naturally, there are other forces at play. For one, the CBC is claiming to use a complicated and advanced metrics selection process, which THE MESSENGER’s Seth Davis attempted to explain when news of this tournament broke just ahead of the 2023-24 season:
NCAA Evaluation Tool (NET) rankings would be used to select teams, which, at the time, was expected to include only Big East, Big Ten and Big 12 squads. Further, the proposal indicated that teams selected from those three conferences would be required to participate in the CBC, which would make it impossible for them to be in the National Invitation Tournament (NIT), or any other postseason tournament, should they receive a bid.[3]
And yep, those would be the three conferences whose regular season schedules are included in FOX Sports’ array of coverage. Not to mention half of what in football is now the Power Four. And don’t those of you nostalgic for the Pac 10 shed any tears, either–both members of the so-called Pac-2, Oregon State and Washington State, are also heading to Vegas. But at least their records (20-12 for the Beavers, 19-14 for the Huskies) more closely resembled those that were among the 131 other schools that had previously qualified for post-season play.
Wikipedia posted a detailed chart laying out how the CBC field stacked up NET-wise against the NIT, the now NCAA-owned granddaddy “consolation tourmanent”, both on the whole and on a 16-team vs. 16-team basis: The raw numbers suggest a slightly more competitive field than old-school wins and losses convey:
| Mean: 84 Median: 79 Best: 44 Worst: 145 |
All 32 teams Mean: 99 Median: 105 Best: 46 Worst: 175 |
Top 16 teams Mean: 78 Median: 78 Best: 46 Worst: 104 |
But then again, as FOX Sports’ website will quickly remind you, this isn’t totally about the teams:
The first-year event features plenty of star power, including Eric Dixon at Villanova and Tyson Degenhart at Boise State. There’s also names like USC’s Desmond Claude, Georgetown’s Micah Peavy and the deliciously named Jizzle James of Cincinnati that will be taking their talents–and their marketability–to Vegas. And having access to fan bases in cities like Los Angeles, Philadelphia, Washington and yes, DePaul fans and alums, Chicago matters in the world of paid influencers. From personal experience, I know this.
And as Bredeson schooled his readers, there’s good old fashioned cash money awaiting them and anyone else who might attract a smidgen of attention this week:
The tournament is breaking ground by awarding NIL payments to participating schools. The championship team will win a $300,000 NIL package, the runner-up will earn a $100,000 package, and the semifinalists will receive $50,000.
And hey, let’s not forget this also helps fill a scheduling gap in a week where poor FS1 is otherwise running replays of UFL games and whatever else their meager budgets will allow. Naturally, Bredeson noted how their executives are justifying the CBC from their end:
Executive Vice President of Fox Sports Jordan Bazant believes that college basketball needs to improve the student-athletes’ experience.
“College football has evolved in so many ways. There’s no big-game bowl experience for basketball programs. We have 12 NBA teams coming to this event, if not more. If you’re in the NCAA Tournament or the NIT, you can’t send someone to every game. At our event, you can, and we’ll have NBA people at every single game. It’s exposure that they wouldn’t otherwise have For our programs, this is their first game and first week in the 2025-26 year. It cleanses you of the year you’ve had to a degree, or it provides that next step for a program.”
I’ve seen–and contributed–a lot of eye-rolling spin come out of FOX-owned entities over my many decades, and I must say what spewed from Bazant was among the most jaw-droppingly BS-laden I’ve ever seen.
The “big-game bowl experience” Bazant references is a side-eye to Bowl Week, which ESPN concopted to provide live content during the extended Christmas and New Year’s holidays when campuses are otherwise dark at about the same time. Not to mention college football continually outrates just about everything else save for the NFL that time. The same can’t be said for college basketball, particularly at a time of year when playoff battles in the NBA (and NHL, for those who care) and major league baseball openings are occuring. And when spring breaks are inconsistently scheduled around the country, and frankly in most cities the weather is far too nice to otherwise think about watching some middle-of-the-pack (or worse) teams square off in what otherwise resembles a pre-season or holiday junket conducted somewhere like Maui or the Bahamas.
I suppose if the low bar you need to exceed is the third encore of that much anticipated Michigan Panthers-Memphis Showboats clash, and if you’re an entity like FOX Sports that’s never had even a hint of Bowl Week in football despite how well their games fare in the regular season, you’re excited about dipping your toe in this kind of world. And certainly AEG has more than enough capital to throw against this kind of wall.
But honestly–unless you’re an absolute die-hard fan of these schools–or somehow related to one of the players who might be personally cashing in if the FOX hype-perbole elevates them this week–do you really care about being “rewarded” with a coupla more games–no matter if you consider them post-season 2024-25 or pre-season 2025-26–in the week leading up to Lent?
There’s more than enough examples of such blind passion among this site’s readership. You tell me. Counter my skepticism if you can. I’ll treat the most compelling argument that can underscore Bazant’s to lunch. Guess where.
Courage…