I have a serious question. Why are you watching today’s men’s national championship game? I’m not implying that you shouldn’t, but if you really think about it, do you have a reason to?

If you’re reading this column, it means you’re probably a sports fan, so maybe that is reason is enough to watch the national title game. Or maybe you have some connection to Connecticut or Butler, in which case that is definitely reason enough. But if this was November, would you watch a Butler-Connecticut game? Maybe, but probably not–and I seriously doubt many of you have this matchup in your bracket. But if you do, I tip my proverbial cap to you.

Regardless of your reason, most of you will watch the game tonight. So will I; but still, I’m certain that tonight’s game will not be watched by nearly as many people as it would if it was, say, North Carolina versus Kansas.

You’re probably asking yourself, “Where is he going with this?” What I’m trying to do here is ask: is it good for college basketball to have to relatively unexpected teams play in the title game? That question also gets to the heart of one of college sports’ biggest conflicts–major conferences versus mid-majors.

On the one hand, college sports are a business, and the major conferences consistently bring in more revenue and more television viewers. I don’t have figures to express this, but I don’t think many people would dispute that notion.

With that in mind, there are also the issues of building programs, building legacies and building fan bases. Nobody should have the power to deem one school as inherently better than another. The Kentuckys, UCLAs and Dukes of the world only became the programs that they are today–with large, traveling fan bases–because of long periods of sustained success.

Butler has now reached two consecutive title games. Maybe we are witnessing the Bulldogs’ transition from a team on the periphery of the national scene to one that will be able to continually recruit talent and be a contender year in and year out. The so-called mid-major schools have had representatives that swoop onto the scene for short periods of time–UNLV in the late 80’s and early 90’s and Utah in the 90’s and early 2000’s come to mind–but few that contend every season (Gonzaga?).

Would it be a good thing if there were more perennial mid-major contenders? Probably. Some people might argue that it takes away from the Cinderella aspect of the NCAA Tournament that people love so much. If mid-majors are expected to do well, then it wouldn’t be quite as thrilling when a George Mason or a VCU goes to the Final Four–at least that’s what the argument would be.

I don’t necessarily think that would be the case, because I don’t think that being a Cinderella team is predicated on being a mid-major but rather on being a low seed. If San Diego State–a two-seed in this year’s bracket–were in the Final Four right now, I don’t think people would be thinking of the Aztecs as Cinderellas. Along the same lines, if 12-seeded Clemson, a member of the ACC, was in the Final Four, that would be a Carl Spackler-esque Cinderella Story.

The biggest hurdle that mid-majors have to vault is the widely held idea that they are simply not as good as the major programs, because they don’t get five-star recruits, and they don’t play as grueling of conference schedules (arguably). That’s why people question how a team like VCU–coming out of the Colonial Athletic Association with 11 losses–can be in the tournament. I guess the moral of the story is that every team is just one team; it doesn’t matter what conference that team comes from or if it’s considered a mid-major or not–it is simply impossible to predict how one team will fare against another on any given day.

 

Share your Horizon League allegiances with Daniel Bohm at [email protected].