March as mad as ever, no thanks to coaches

The NCAA Tournament in basketball is one of the biggest sporting
events in the country. Millions fill out brackets, watch the games,
and look forward to March Madness every year.

But many basketball coaches around the country wanted to water
down the product.

A couple of weeks ago, the NCAA shot down a proposal by the
National Association of Basketball Coaches to expand the tournament
field from 65 teams to 128. Thankfully, the NCAA made the right
decision (for once).

I’m not one of those old sports traditionalists that
thinks sports need to stay the way they are, or go back to the way
they were in the good old days. But expanding to 128 teams
would’ve been silly.

As it is, with 65 teams, the last few teams to get into the
tournament are usually only one small step from mediocrity.
Alabama, Arizona, Indiana, Michigan State, Seton Hall and Wisconsin
all got an at-large bid into this year’s men’s NCAA
Tournament with 10 or more losses. So with 65 teams, it’s
already not that challenging to make it into the NCAA Tournament
““ but it is still an accomplishment when you get there. With
128, teams with losing records would likely be considered. And no
one needs to see 13-15 teams play in the NCAA Tournament.

Also, a 128-team first round would be incredibly difficult for
fans to follow and would make bracket pools ““ a major reason
why the tournament is so popular ““ more complicated and less
easy to fill out.

There’s also the issue of student-athletes missing class
to travel across the country. With a bigger tournament, more
athletes would be gone for longer periods of time. Not that anyone
in college athletics has ever really cared about
student-athletes.

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The O.J. Mayo stories show exactly why the new NBA policy of not
drafting people directly out of high school is actually bad for
college basketball, not good.

When the NBA made the rule, which became effective for the 2006
NBA draft, sports experts and fans across the country hailed it as
a good thing since more great basketball stars would play in
college instead of leaving directly to the pros.

Mayo, who many experts say would be the No. 1 pick in the 2007
NBA Draft if he were eligible, will instead reportedly go to USC
for one year ““ and no more. He reportedly wants to go to a
major media market for the exposure and to be the sole big name in
a program, not just someone else at a big-name school like Duke or
North Carolina.

Not that I blame Mayo for any of this ““ if I were in his
position, I’d do the same thing (except for the going to USC
part; I’d choose a different school, of course). Mayo is
doing the right thing for himself by trying to create as much hype
as possible so that once he gets to the NBA, he can sign
endorsement deals for ridiculous amounts of money.

This is the NBA’s fault. Mayo, and many others, will
essentially use college basketball as a one-year pit stop on the
way to the pros, with no care in the world about college
basketball’s tradition or an education.

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I, like many people, hate that the MLB All-Star Game decides who
gets home-field advantage in the World Series. But I have to admit,
the idea has served its purpose. The end of this past
Tuesday’s All-Star Game became much more watchable than
usual.

When UCLA alum Troy Glaus’ ninth-inning hit bounced over
the wall for a bad luck ground-rule double, I actually had an
emotional reaction to the outcome of the game ““ something
I’d never had while watching an All-Star Game.

E-mail Quiñonez at gquinonez@media.ucla.edu.

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