Brian D Helland wrote:
> Who am I to judge, you ask? I'm not judging, I'm simply expressing my
> opinion that these programs are wasting their time and energy pretending
> that they're big-time schools. I have the right to my own opinion, just
> as you do. Don't get all huffy about it.
Whether you're judging depends upon your motives. If you think that their presence
in D1 is somehow bad for everyone else, then perhaps you aren't being judgemental.
If your only objective is to say that they are wasting their own time and
resources, that's a different story. Maybe you should let them decide what their
own interests are.
> > Anyway -- you miss the big picture. A program is D-1 for many, many
> > reasons other than whether their football or basketball team is doing
> > well. Maybe they do well in other sports, or maybe there are other
> > factors.
>
> Care to rephrase this? I don't understand what you meant.
Sometimes a school is D1 because its size mandates that they have no other choice.
Sometimes its because the schools to wich they consider themselves a peer (which
might have little to do with athletics) are D1, and that's who they are going to
compete with. Maybe they think the paydayof playing UCLA or Michigan is worth
having their brains beat in. Maybe they do well enough in other sports that they
want to be a D1 program even though it means their basketball team is going to be
pretty bad.
> I never even suggested making more Divisions, so don't put words in my
> mouth. But I do see your point.
Here you are engaged in a semantic trick. You want to create Div 1AA for
basketball and are claiming that this is not a new division. It looks like a duck;
it quacks like a duck; I think it's a duck.
> Again, you're putting words in my mouth. Like I said below, Football has
> a D-IAA that helps eliminate some of the absurdities of D-I Basketball.
> Of course you're going to have a large number of teams that, for one
> reason or another, can't put together a winning program. I just think
> that D-I Basketball has gotten absurd.
Actually, your argument loses its thread about this point. A lot of the teams that
you want to move down to 1AA have winning records (almost half of them, in fact).
Sure, they can't beat Kentucky (or at least are very unlikely to), but they spend
most of their season playing teams from about the same level that they are at. A
lot of them throw in 2 or 3 games that they know they are going to lose to make
money. There are really only two effects that creating a 1AA level will produce.
It will create another national championship for the new level; this really won't
add that much excitement to these teams season. Right now, they get the thrill of
winning a conference championship and a shot at one of the big guns in the
tournament. One upset at that point is probably as satisfying as a 1AA title would
be. How often would Richmond, for instance, get a chance to beat Indiana in the
NCAA tournament in your system? To say nothing of Valparaiso. Your logic only
holds true if winning a national title is the only stick by which success is going
to be measured.
The other thing that would happen is that the big powers would be penalized more
for scheduling the weak teams, since games against 1AA opponents might not count
towards making the tournament. This might be a good thing in terms of producing
more interesting non-conference schedules, but the 1AA schools aren't going to
thank you for it. They already have the option to not play these kinds of games if
they don't want to; this will deprive them of the opportunity to collect a paycheck
in December.
> > > The point of having D-II and III sports is so the
> > > small schools in the NCAA can be competitive and have a realistic shot
> > of
> > > winning championships at least SOME of the time.
> >
> > No it isn't.
> Then why are there lower divisions? Just for the heck of it?!?! If
> you are going to disagree, at least offer an alternative explanation.
Well, I'll at least say that you're part right. In addition to segregating schools
by size, they also provide different rules structures (awarding or not awarding
scholarships being only the most obvious) for schools with different resource
commitments. I just don't see why that necessarily ought to prevent a school from
setting itself bigger targets.
> There is a big difference between programs that are bad because of inept
> management and programs that are bad because they just don't have the
> resources to compete at the D-I level. I'm talking about programs that
> are D-I who have never had and/or never will have the resources to be
> competitive in any way, shape, or form.
This is a much harder distinction to make than I think you are considering.
> > Why not? Who cares. Let them. The schools think they're getting
> > something out of it, so let them stay. If they drop to D-II and are
> > strong, then it's going to make a lot of other programs weaker by
> > comparison -- then we run into the same cyclic problem as above.
>
> > You make it sound as if dropping a level will automatically make you
> > good without making anyone else worse by comparison.
>
> This is why I support a D-IAA for Basketball.
In a more complicated way, this does pretty much the same thing. It will create a
new championship, but it will be one that obvious has less meaning. It will do
absolutely nothing to help the teams at the bottom of the new division, who won't
even be able to compete for that.
> Are you saying that D-I Football has just as many pretenders
> percentage-wise as D-I Basketball? Sorry, I'm not buying it. Show me the
> evidence.
It sort of depends upon what measure you use to define "pretender", but I'm
probably going to side with Adam on this one. Let's take a look at the number of
teams that have had a legitimate shot at the national title. There is a much
smaller set of teams in football that have finished ranked among the top four teams
than there are different teams that have made it to the basketball Final Four.
This has more to do with the mechanics of building a football team vs building a
basketball team than it does with the number of divisions, but it's still true.
Northwestern notwithstanding, bad football teams are more likely to stay bad than
bad basketball teams.
> According to your statement above, if all D-II programs tommorrow decided
> to move their baskeball programs to D-I, they should be allowed to do so.
> That would be a total farce and an affront to common sense.
If that's what they want to do, sure, let them. It also won't happen, so it's an
absurd objection to a real world set of procedures.
> The NC$$ has
> certain conditions for football programs to meet if they want to move up
> to D-IA. Perhaps it is time to impose more strict conditions for
> Basketball programs that want to move up.
Well, this might be happening, though not in the pure-hearted sort of way you are
talking about. I think some recent trends in NCAA legislation have started us in
this direction, but it isn't because the small schools want a title for which they
can compete. The big time programs have decided that they don't want to share the
money as equally and want more voting power in deciding D1 issues.
> Let me explain this one last time (I hope!): I can live with various
> strengths of conferences in any NC$$ Division. I can accept the fact that
> some programs are bad year-in and year-out. But I also think that some
> level of common sense should prevail as well. And IMHO, D-I Basketball
> crossed that ambiguous line a long time ago. It's like if Major League
> Baseball decided to expand their ranks to include A, AA, and AAA teams and
> conferences. That's exaggerating a little, but I hope you see my point.
> All I am saying is that a D-IAA Basketball Conference would inject a
> little common sense into the Basketball world.
Again, I agree with Adam. It's not that the idea of a Div 1AA in basketball is
necessarily a bad idea. I just don't think that it should be imposed by the rest
of us upon the schools in question. If that's what they want, fine, I have no
problem with them setting it up. I don't think that that's what they want, though.
J. Michael Neal
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