When you’re filling out those NCAA tournament brackets this week, keep in mind a variety of factors.
Think about a team’s schedule: Did it puff up its record against patsies? Think about lineups: Does it have a seasoned point guard and a third scoring option, and how does it match up with specific teams in its draw? Think about intangibles: Does its coach go mad in March?
And think about football: Does the school play in a Bowl Championship Series conference?
The oft-criticized formula, which produced a laughable Rose Bowl matchup between Miami and Nebraska last January, has become a factor in the NCAA tournament.
A big factor.
It’s all about money. Four years into the BCS, there are strong indications that Division I-A football wealth is altering the complexion of the Division I men’s basketball tournament.
Consider a few numbers: In last year’s tourney, each Elite Eight team belonged to a BCS football conference–including Atlantic 10 basketball member Temple, which plays football in the Big East, one of six BCS conferences. The Atlantic Coast Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac-10 and Southeastern Conference round out the BCS.
The year before, seven of the Elite Eight came from BCS football leagues. In 1999, two months after the first BCS championship game, only five of the Elite Eight came from the BCS.
The Elite Eight is critical to this discussion because it means a school has played for a trip to college hoops’ promised land–the Final Four.
Over those three years, only one of 12 Final Four teams–1999 national champion Connecticut–did not come from a BCS league. But the Huskies will soon begin playing football in the Big East.
The question is whether these numbers represent a statistical anomaly, or whether they provide evidence of a rich-getting-richer trend.
“I think the gap is definitely growing,” said former Illinois coach Lou Henson, who coaches at non-BCS New Mexico State. “Football started it. If you’re not careful, it’s going to continue to keep growing.”
Said Alabama-Birmingham coach Murry Bartow, whose Blazers play in non-BCS Conference USA: “A lot of those [BCS schools] are state institutions. You’ve got huge football backing, huge football money, and that means great resources for basketball.”
But others look at the same recent NCAA tournament results and are skeptical about the connection between the BCS and basketball.
“I think you’ve probably got something that’s interesting, but whether you can draw a conclusion that the BCS in football has absolutely impacted the tournament, I don’t know if that’s the case,” said Mike Slive, commissioner of Chicago-based Conference USA.
The debate is timely because three non-BCS schools–Cincinnati, Gonzaga and Marquette–are poised to make deep forays into the tourament. If one or more can march to the Elite Eight or beyond, it could puncture the theory that a school has to play big-time football to compete at the highest level of big-time basketball. Of the three, only Cincinnati has a Division I-A football program.
The Bearcats became an immediate favorite to reach the Final Four when they drew a No. 1 seed in the West Regional on Sunday. Marquette is seeded fifth in the East. Gonzaga drew a No. 6 seed in the West.
“It would be nice for somebody to do some damage in this year’s event outside of the BCS,” said West Coast Conference Commissioner Michael Gilleran, whose league includes Gonzaga.
Not playing major-college football hasn’t hindered the Zags in recent tourneys, at least for the first weekend. The Zags have made it to the Sweet 16 each of the last three years, a feat matched only by Duke and Michigan State.
In 1999 the Bulldogs advanced to the Elite Eight, where they were defeated by Connecticut, which was not yet a BCS school. In 2000 and 2001, the Zags fell to BCS members Purdue and Michigan State in the Sweet 16.
The Zags have earned national respect, but they continue to be labeled a midmajor. Coach Mark Few bristles at the term, and he suspects it has something to do with football.
“I don’t know what [midmajor] means,” Few said. “It just seems to me like a convenient way to categorize things. But I don’t understand how it describes and compares basketball teams. It’s describing football facilities and/or maybe recruiting budgets and things like that.”
The six BCS conferences have different methods of dividing the $13 million per team payouts from the four BCS bowls–the Rose, Fiesta, Sugar and Orange. In the Big Ten, the BCS can produce as much as $2 million per school if the league draws multiple bids.
On some campuses, BCS money is plowed right back into football; the basketball program might not see a dime. At others schools, it provides support for non-revenue sports.
But there’s a clear link between BCS membership and improved resources for sports other than football.
Consider Ohio State. The bastion of Woody Hayes, Archie Griffin and “Script Ohio” will always be regarded as a football factory. But coach Jim O’Brien’s basketball team won the Big Ten tournament title Sunday.
Asked how Ohio State’s BCS membership affects his school’s basketball program, athletic director Andy Geiger said, “the name recognition. It’s unbelievable how there’s a carryover as your name gets recognized over and over and over again. The other thing is, you develop expectations. You’ll find that a lot of these [BCS] schools are good at everything. We want to be thought of as … more than just a football school.”
As mighty as they’ve been on the gridiron, the Buckeyes have also established a grand hoops tradition: They won the national title in 1960 and reached the final the next two years. In those days they played at charming St. John Arena. As the university has upgraded athletic facilities in the BCS era, they’ve moved into glitzy Value City Arena.
“It drips resources,” Geiger said.
But the gap between the BCS and non-BCS isn’t all about money, according to Gilleran of the West Coast Conference. “We’re small,” he said. “We can’t hide kids (in undemanding majors). We can’t do papers for them. Even if we wanted to, we just can’t do that.
“[Recruits] are going to go where the TV [exposure] is, where the monster arenas are, everything that feels to them like big time. You’ll notice that academics has been absent from our discussion.”
There has long been a division between the big dogs and the small fish in the NCAA tournament. But only recently has it been attributed to football.
Go back to 1977, when the Final Four made its last appearance in Atlanta.
The only school that played big-time football was North Carolina, which eventually joined the BCS. The others–Marquette, Charlotte and UNLV–were primarily known as basketball schools, and still are. Marquette beat the Tar Heels in the final.
“I think that’s a real anachronism,” said Geiger, who was a member of the tournament selection committee that season. “And I don’t think that’s good necessarily.”
The 1977 Final Four was staged at the Omni, which seated about 16,000 fans. When the event returns to Atlanta this month, it will be played at the 40,000-seat Georgia Dome.
The odds are that the four entries will come from BCS conferences, though Cincinnati, Marquette and Gonzaga may carry the flag for the rest of the nation.
“The beauty of basketball is that we don’t have to be in the BCS to get to the Elite Eight and the Final Four,” said coach Sean Finney of Tulane, a Conference USA team. “That’s what makes our sport special.”
Indeed, Conference USA was favored to produce a national champion as the 2000 tourney approached. But national player of the year Kenyon Martin broke his leg in the conference tournament, and the second-seeded Bearcats were eliminated in the NCAA’s second round.
“We’re not one of the six BCS founding leagues, but I see us getting stronger and stronger and stronger,” Slive said. “I see us having the tools and the coaches and the players to set out and do what we’re setting out to do.”
Slive paused, then drew a comparison between some of his league’s more stout basketball programs and their neighboring BCS rivals.
“The question is, Is Ohio State competing with Cincinnati? That’s the question,” Slive said. “Cincinnati has had the better of it over time. It’s the same with Marquette and Wisconsin. Charlotte and North Carolina. Memphis and Tennessee.”
Each of the schools Slive mentioned has decided to ante up to stay competitive in basketball. Marquette, for example, has invested in a state-of-the-art practice facility. But not having big football revenue makes it tough.
“At a school like ours, so much of that comes from private donations,” coach Tom Crean said. “We don’t have football to fall back on. When I was an assistant at Michigan State, we had great football there and we loved it.”
One reason the BCS leagues dominate the back end of the tourney is because they dominate the front end–Selection Sunday.
In 1999 BCS conferences claimed 23 of 34 at-large berths. In 2000 they drew 22 of 35. Last year their share grew to 27 of 34 at-large berths.
On Sunday, BCS football members grabbed 26 of 34 at-large bids. The non-BCS conferences find themselves scrounging for at-large bids.
“It’s the front end that we’re concerned about,” Gilleran said. “Like in life, it’s easier to make money when you have money. When you’re working with limited resources, it’s just more difficult to ante up. It’s free enterprise. It’s the American way.”
