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By Adam Glatczak
Please don’t go, Great Alaska Shootout
Love or hate the NIT’s decision to give Stanford a home game over
Xavier in the second round-and it was a bonehead call-if tournaments
like the Preseason NIT, Maui Invitational and Great Alaska Shootout are
being set up to die, the events will be sorely missed.
Unless an appeal is successful-and chances are slim it will be-the
NCAA’s two-in-four rule will soon mean the end of exempted preseason
tourneys. The only way they’ll survive is if coaches can somehow
persuade athletic directors to let their teams compete in these events,
possibly forfeiting a home game or two or having to ditch one of those
big bucks made-for-TV neutral site matchups that the BCS conference
schools go gaga for.
Considering these are the very donkeys responsible for this
abominable act, fat chance.
If this is the beginning of the end for tradition-rich tournaments
like Maui’s, which funds more than half of host school Chaminade
University’s athletic budget, or the Shootout, which has given host
Alaska-Anchorage a chance to beat such heavyweights as Tim Duncan-led
Wake Forest and Notre Dame, it’ll be downright criminal.
But for the eyes of a few airheads, these tourneys have absolutely no
downside. They are the closest simulators of NCAA tournament play there
is in the regular season, with quality teams playing one another on
neutral courts with neutral referees. They’re also played in unique
settings, which gives them a certain charm factor. Who could’ve resisted
Alaska-Anchorage vs. Hawaii in the Shootout in 1989, or UAA vs. Maine
several years later?
They’re also the best chance for non-BCS schools to get a chance
against higher-profile schools who ignore them like the plague (see Ball
State last year.) Which is part of exactly why they’ll soon be gone.
The whole thing is just yet another signal of the major conferences’
power play to monopolize absolutely anything that bleeds a dollar in
college sports. The two-in-four rule is the athletic directors’ and
commissioners’ of these conferences way of trying to bring in one more
crappy non-conference home game before the season to puff up the
athletic department’s coffers, all while avoiding the Ball States and
Western Kentuckys.
Exempted tournaments did need to be curtailed, as they were
mushrooming up like bowl games to where there were simply too many. In
that way the two-in-four rule is good, but a simple moratorium on any
more exempted tournaments would’ve been a fairer idea.
However, it’s the underlying hope of the greedsters to eventually get
rid of these tourneys that is the real issue with the rule. The rule is
intended to eventually put these tournaments out of business by not
letting them woo good team but every once in awhile.
The biggies would like to get rid of the exemptions totally, which
allow a school to count three games as one in a tournament like Maui and
would certainly kill what tourneys are left. And that’s where the true
skunk smell of the two-in-four rule is.
Everyone knows how the self-proclaimed “power” conferences have
always been driven by dollar signs, and most reluctantly accept it.
Recently, though, it’s gotten beyond greed and into the category of
absurdity. Regarding these tournaments, AD’s and commissioners from
these leagues believe “outsiders” shouldn’t be taking “their” money.
They speak of tournament organizers, but they might as well be saying to
hell with Chaminade and Alaska-Anchorage and the Carlesimos and their
NIT, we need another home game against Arkansas-Pine Bluff.
Sure, it’s fashionable to bash the BCS and major schools, to the
point where some just shut it all out. It’s gotten to a point where many
of those school’s fans automatically hate any team from non-BCS leagues
(see Gonzaga), and that’s a shame.
But this case isn’t part of a vendetta, because many AD’s from
smaller conferences would do the same thing if they had the resources.
This is something that should make every fan angry, whether you follow
Kentucky or Eastern Kentucky, because everyone’s getting cheated.
The Maui Invitational has featured absolutely loaded fields the last
few years, and this year with Kentucky, Utah, Indiana, Gonzaga and
Virginia is no exception. And the Great Alaska Shootout has an even
longer history than Maui-it’s been around since 1978.
In short, these tournaments are everything a college basketball fan
could ask for in November. But that’s not enough for AD’s and
commissioners, and its never enough with these guys.
Apparently the BCS, which is so exclusive it has made nationally
known football schools like BYU become referred to as “mid-major”,
wasn’t enough. Having officials from your league call home
non-conference games to ensure things go your way isn’t enough.
Thoroughly avoiding competition against good teams from leagues like the
Mid-American Conference and Missouri Valley Conference isn’t enough. And
playing dirty to steal 90 percent of at-large bids to the NCAA
Tournament isn’t enough.
At worst, let’s hope at least some of these tournaments are spared.
Maybe set up a cut off year; any tournament started after, say, 1997,
has no exemption. That would pare the number of these, allowing the
tournaments to keep bringing in good teams while getting rid of the
useless ones. Example: the Guardians Classic, which last year was
basically four versions of the old St. John’s Joe Lapchick Tournament
and all but guaranteed the host schools playing a “final four.”
The fall of tournaments like these would be a sad commentary on the
BCS conferences and their commissioners and athletic directors. Other
than their pocket books, everyone’s hurt in this case: players, coaches,
fans, big conference or small.
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