BIAH weighs in: college hoops popularity

Over the last two days, there has been quite a bit of talk about college hoops, its popularity, and what, if anything, we can do to improve that.

My question?

Is college basketball really having popularity issues?

Because I don't think it is.

In November, we have Feast Week, which was spawned from an ESPN-induced rule change put in place in an effort to capitalize on the popularity of preseason tournaments like the Maui Invitational and the Great Alaska Shootout.

The overdose of college hoops during Thanksgiving is a direct result of its popularity.

In December, ESPN starts showing two, sometimes three, games nationally on as many as three different channels (ESPN, ESPN2, ESPN U, not including the countless number of games on ESPN Full court and ESPN360) each night during the week, then ratcheting up the coverage on Saturday's to make hoops an all-day event. Once conference play rolls around in January, each day's broadcast gets its own name - Big Monday, Super Tuesday, etc. - while Saturday's now feature a College Gameday for hoops.

In fact, I'd argue that this kind of daily scheduling is a bad thing, and one of the reasons that it is so difficult to win on the road.

So explain to me how hoops could be declining in popularity when the amount of coverage it gets, and the number of games its possible to watch, regardless of where you live or where a team plays, is constantly increasing or expanding? Perfect example: I live in Washington DC, and if I had my druthers (meaning if it was worth my time) I could have watched just about every single Pac-10 game this season, whether it be via TV broadcasts, ESPN's family of networks, or by streaming the game live over the internet.

And this sport's popularity is declining?

There are two main problems I have with Travis's argument. For starters, he mentions that Tennessee, with all their suspensions and dismissal's, upsetting Kansas wasn't shown on Sportscenter until 40 minutes into the hour. I can't believe I'm the first to point this out, but the UT-KU game was aired on CBS, and ESPN has been notorious for focusing on games that occurred on their family of networks and stories broken by their flock of reporters.

It really shocks you that, on the Monday after Wildcard Weekend in the NFL, Sportscenter doesn't talk about a CBS college basketball game for 2/3 of their show?

It surprises you to the point that you question hoops popularity?

The other issue I have is that Travis seems to consistently harp on the point that the NCAA Tournament is far and beyond the college basketball regular season in terms of popularity, viewership, and the number of people that actually pay attention to it and participate in it.

Travis views this as a negative.

I think this is a positive.

The only sporting event that draws more interest from the portion of our population that would otherwise be watching reruns of "The New Adventures of Old Christine" is the Super Bowl (and maybe the World Cup, depending on where you are when you read this). Its where college basketball makes its money (basically all of it, actually).

And the reason it is so popular has nothing to do with the basketball being played.

While the basketball is always great, with story books to be written and legends to be made and buzzers to be beaten, what draws in so many random fans (casual fans would be watching regardless, random fans are the people that show up just because they filled out a bracket) is the bracket. Think about it. By printing out this one Tournament Tree that perfectly fills an 8X11 piece of paper and picking 63 winners, all of a sudden every "random fan" that has never heard of John Wall or Coach K, that thinks a pick-and-roll is the most effective way to dispose of a booger, that makes their picks based on how well the team's colors would match their bedset, now has a dog in every fight.

They now have a reason to cheer and yell and scream and get into each and every game on TV. It doesn't matter that they don't names of the players, the coaches, or even the team. All that matters is that they picked the blue team, and the blue team has the ball, down by one with 30 seconds left.

You want to save college basketball?

Don't worry about popularity. The fans will always be there, and there's always another crop of freshman coming in the fall to turn into hoop heads. Don't worry about the schedule overlaps or when the season starts or finishes. Don't worry about the casual fan; there's a reason they're referred to as casual.

No, if you want to save college basketball, don't let the tournament expand to 96 games.

And while there are a multitude of reasons why you shouldn't, the biggest should be the bracket. How many people a going to fill out a bracket that takes up two pages? How many people are going to pick a winner for 95 games? How many fans - casual, random, or otherwise - will no longer have a vested interest in every game?

Too many.