Fixing College Basketball

Summary of Proposals

· Conferences are realigned based on geography and rivalries

· The college basketball schedule is expanded to promote competition, equity, and comparison

· More money is put in the pockets of players

Conferences

Many college basketball conferences are bloated after successive waves of realignment, while others are now hollowed out. This left many conferences without an identity, which has affected smaller conferences like the Western Athletic (WAC) and bigger conferences like the Atlantic Coast (ACC) and Big East conference alike. At the same time, some traditional rivalries like Missouri-Kansas and Syracuse-Georgetown lost a lot of intensity or were halted altogether. It’s one thing for these rivals to play each other; it’s another thing when conference titles are on the line. Additionally, with some conferences bursting at the seams with 12 or 14+ teams it became impossible for some of those traditional rivalries that remained to be played twice per season. Rivalries may not matter to the tournament selection committee, but they matter to teams, students, and fans.

Geography accelerated the decline in identity. The ACC and Big East, for example, no longer really seem like appropriate names for their respective conferences. Louisville and Notre Dame could hardly be considered “Atlantic” or “Coastal” while Creighton isn’t even east of the Mississippi. Then there’s the sprawling distances: over 1,200 miles separates Miami (FL) and Syracuse and Creighton and Providence. For its 10 road conference games in 2022, Creighton traveled almost 9,000 miles. This is about to get worse in 2024–25 when 4 Pac 12 teams join the Big 10. Some of these bigger schools can afford the travel expenses, but for smaller schools (some of whom travel much farther than Creighton) the costs have got to eat up the benefits of playing in whatever conference they’re a part of.

And on the point of geographic distance, college basketball players usually play two games a week. That means players in the Big 10 will make at least two cross-country (or nearly cross-country) trips every week in conference play. This kind of travel, on top of games, practice, coursework, media obligations, etc., exacts a high mental and physical toll on the players. The realignment, particularly created by the Big 10, was done without any consideration of the well-being of student athletes.

What I propose here is capping the number of teams in each conference at ten (with the exception of the Ivy which will remain at 8) while trying to tie together certain rivalries and pay attention to geography. Keeping the number of conferences at thirty-two leaves 318 Division I teams. The appendix below shows the teams by conference. I have tried, wherever possible, to align rivals within conferences and to limit geographic spread. These conferences would be locked in, although I am open to a relegation system to allow teams from Division II to move up and perhaps some way for schools to be traded across conferences.

Scheduling Proposals

It is incredibly difficult to accurately evaluate college basketball teams and compare any two or more teams. A big reason for this is the disparity in strengths of schedule between any two teams. There’s also the influence of absences on the metrics. Missing a key player or head coach, even for just a few games, can skew metrics significantly. This can make the game exciting, especially during March Madness, because there is so much room for an upset to occur, but it also leads to frustrations and debate about seeding and the inclusion of one team over another in the NCAA Tournament.

Furthermore, there are other considerations, like equity, to consider. Some schools under current scheduling formats do not get the opportunity to play a home non-conference game. Additionally, most smaller schools are reliant on so-called “buy games” (games in which a larger school pays a smaller school to play them). I would like to propose an expanded schedule to incorporate the following tournaments and matchups:

1. 10 32-team tournaments featuring one team from each conference

— Takes place in late January/early February after two rounds of conference play

— Teams are seeded 1–32 by a panel of bracketologists and statisticians

— Like the smaller early-season tournaments we currently have, every team plays the same number of rounds

— Sponsors are welcome to bid to have their name attached to a tournament or even a round of the tournament

2. A round-robin tournament between the conferences in each tier

— Follows the 32-team tournaments

— Matchups are based on ranking within conference

— — For example: the best teams in each high major conference would all play each other

3. Home-and-home doubleheaders between teams from each conference tier

— Forces high major programs to play smaller schools at the smaller school

— Reduces the need for buy games and increased travel by the smaller school

— First game in November, second game in December

— Example:

— — Butler (high major) plays Buffalo (low major), Albany (high minor), and Appalachian State (low minor)

4. A handful of additional early-season, non-conference games

—Preferably one or two reserved for any rivalries not accommodated in my realignment

***

All-in-all, this would amount to about fifty games in the regular season, fifteen or sixteen more than most NCAA Tournament teams play prior to the tournament. Conference tournaments would be done away with, and each team would play its conference opponents three times (home, away, and neutral with the neutral site games taking place at the end of the season). That leaves a typical season looking something like this:

· 27 conference games

· 5 games in the 32-team tournament

· 7 games in the round-robin inter-tier tournament

· 6 games between the home-and-home doubleheaders

· 5 games open

The schedule changes accomplish three things: increased competition by expanding the variety of teams played and where they play; increased equity by allowing smaller schools to play more games in their home arena keeping revenue home; greater comparability between teams, conferences, and tiers through the top-to-bottom inter-tier tournament and number of teams played. Currently, most teams play a fairly limited schedule that includes eleven to thirteen non-conference games and then eighteen to twenty conference games. That leaves most teams playing just around twenty-five different opponents-less than 10% of the current number of Division I teams. Under my proposal, teams would play closer to 40 different opponents, which sets up the possibility of more common opponents, the best way to compare schedules when enough commonalities can be found.

The Players

While I hope that these changes may actually relieve some of the physical and mental burden on the players, there is the possibility that this may not be the case. Name, image, and likeness (NIL) deals certainly help players, particularly the most talented benefit financially for their efforts, but much of those benefits accrue to players at big schools. I would expand this with a revenue sharing agreement that gives the players a percentage of revenues from media deals, ticket sales, and conference payments.

Furthermore, I would grant players seven years of eligibility, and reduce the amount of coursework athletes need to complete to remain eligible. Yes, players still have to be enrolled at school and taking classes, but this would allow players greater flexibility in how they choose to prioritize their time in college. It should also make some of the proposed changes above more tenable to the players, whose buy-in is the most important.

Conclusion

I have made some bold proposals here, but I believe they would benefit the players and the sport. If adopted, revenue from tournaments and media deals would be distributed more evenly across the sport, and the players would see greater shares of revenue for their labor. We would see greater competition within the sport. Finally, players should be under less stress thanks to less travel (at least during conference play) and more flexibility in their personal schedules.

I borrowed some ideas from this article published in The Athletic: A modest proposal: One man’s quixotic quest to remake men’s college basketball conferences into an ideal alignment — The Athletic. Moore’s ideas about a pre-Christmas tournament seeded by Kevin Pauga, Ken Pomeroy, and Jeff Sagarin was influential in my proposal for the 32-team tournaments. Also, his general realignment principles based on geography and rivalries were also highly influential.

Appendix

Conference Tiers