Are You Kidding Me?

So tonight, as I was parousing some of my typical, nightly reads, I came across this diddy at Rush The Court. Apparently, The Gazelle Group, which runs the CBE Classic and the Legends Classic (both of which are preseason tournaments), has changed the format a bit. Both are 16 team tournaments, with four power conference teams (Kansas, Florida, Washington, and Syracuse in the CBE; Washington State, Mississippi State, Texas Tech, and Pitt in the Legends) hosting a preliminary two-day, four-team tournament. Each winner then heads to a larger venue for the two-day, four-team finals (the same way the Preseason NIT is set-up).

Only this year, the tournaments are being run a little bit differently. From the CBE site:

This year, the O’Reilly Auto Parts CBE Classic will be played under a new format…

- Regional hosts automatically advance to the Championship Rounds in Kansas City regardless of the regional results.

- All other participants will advance to play a round-robin series at one of two other sites. Thus, every participating team will be guaranteed four games.

And from the Legends site:

The four regional hosts advance to the Championship Rounds at Prudential Center regardless of the regional results. The other participants will advance to play a round-robin series at Fairleigh Dickinson's Rothman Center on November 28, 29, and 30.

Are you kidding me?!?!?!? Yea, I know, 99.9% of the time teams like Pitt and Kansas and Florida are going to advance out of their brackets and make it to the finals. But it doesn't happen all the time. You only have to think back to last year, when tiny Gardner-Webb laid the smack down on Kentucky in Rupp, then won again to advance to play in Madison Square Garden, where they gave UConn a fight before losing by 12. Or what about in 2006, when George Mason advanced all the way to the Final Four of the NCAA tournament.

Teams making a run like that is great for college basketball. They're great for the fans. Who does not benefit? The guys that make the money. Who do you think MSG wanted coming that weekend - Gardner-Webb, whose enrollment is all of 4,000, or Kentucky, who has Big Blue Nation traveling with them everywhere they go?

I'm not saying that any of these teams are going to lose. In fact, I would probably bet that all eight power conference teams are going to win both early round games. My problem is that what makes college basketball so appealing and so awesome to watch is the one-and-done aspect of it. The David slaying the Giant. The little guy knocking off the superpower. And the geniuses at the Gazelle Group are taking that away because they want to make sure they make an extra buck.

If you think this is as outrageous as I do, if you love college basketball as much as I do, or if you simply are bored at work and want to mess with a prick in a suit, shoot some emails to this guy:

Dan Loney (CBE): dloney@gazellegroup.com