No More Cinderella

Holy cow, what a week. Last week I was tasked with giving a presentation to by far the largest audience of my adult life. Somewhere between 500 and 600 folks in the energy industry had the riveting pleasure of listening to 20 minutes from yours truly on how a large retail company approaches energy efficiency at its stores. Yes, a raucous time was had by all. As I mentioned in a blog post last summer, I’m no great fan of public speaking. The pressure was further ramped up on me, as the conference inconveniently scheduled a speaker who appears regularly on CNBC shortly before me. This guy was channeling Tony Robbins, while I was hoping my suit jacket would be enough to protect the masses from my panicked sweating. I’m happy to report that I ultimately managed to hold my own on stage. At least that’s what they tell me. I think I went blackout ala Will Ferrell in the Old School debate scene about halfway through my presentation.

Anyway, the speech was part of an industry conference that started on the first Sunday of the NCAA tournament. Now that would normally irritate me, but it actually served the purpose of preventing me from having to witness my brackets go up in smoke for yet another year. More importantly than the demise of my dreams of winning some cash, though, are the implications for college basketball as we move forward. And while many are cheering the unlikely presence of VCU and Butler in the Final Four, I don’t think those implications are good.

College basketball is struggling these days. I watched fewer games this year than I ever have in my life. Now there are a number of reasons for that, one of which is certainly the fact that my Mississippi State Bulldogs were a train wreck both on and off the court. Watching two members of your team throwing haymakers at each other in the stands after a December game is not a great motivator to buy the ESPN Full Court package.

Mississippi State basketball 2010-2011...good seats still available in the bench area.

Still, I’ve watched my share of college basketball in years past even when my alma mater struggled. But back then it was easy to make sense of the general landscape of the sport. The “Big Six” conferences each had two or three perennial powers that could be found in the top 25 every year. Then there were another two or three programs in each league that were typically solid and trying to claw their way to elite status. Then in any given year you might have another few squads across the country that would be having a great year by their standards and therefore be in the mix. Occasionally a UNLV or Memphis might come out of left field and interject themselves, and that was it. Lengthy debates about the relative strength of conferences would be had. In most years, you could count on the ACC coming out on top in those discussions, but all the major conferences could hold their collective heads high. Also, you could watch the progression of a team over two or three years. Sure, Kentucky might have taken an early exit from the tournament one year, but you knew that their freshmen-laden team would be back and even better the following season.

Fast forward to today. Who exactly is in the Final Four again? And who are their players? Without looking it up, I can name exactly three players on Final Four teams- Kemba Walker, Brandon Knight, and DeAndre Liggins. That’s a poor statement about me for sure, but it also says something about college hoops. Honestly, if you exclude Mississippi State and North Carolina, I don’t think I could name more than 10 players if you let me choose from every team in the country. I think the NBA rule mandating players wait one year after high school before being eligible for the draft has made the college game even worse than it was when the best players bypassed it entirely and opted to go straight to the league. At least back then there was a bit more stability.

There has to be something else going on as well, though. How have we ended up with a world where Wake Forest goes 8-24 in freaking college basketball? Meanwhile we have San Diego State and BYU camped out in the top 10 for the entire season. The second round of this year’s tournament (I mean the round with 32 teams, don’t get me started on the “First Four”) featured the following teams- George Mason, Temple, San Diego St, Richmond, Morehead St, Virginia Commonwealth, Butler, Gonzaga, and BYU. That’s eight of the 32 teams! The second round used to be the exciting chance to watch the one or two little guy Cinderella schools that had fought through somebody from a power conference and now had their shot at an improbable run at the Sweet Sixteen. Now half of those teams are favored in their second round games. Back in 1999 when Gus Johnson went bonkers on the mic for one of the first times as Gonzaga upset Florida to reach the Elite Eight, it was a legitimately moving moment because it was something that we hadn't seen before. Take a look and see if you can remember what it was like, lo those many years ago, when there was still such a thing as a Cinderella story in the NCAA tournament...


"The slipper still fits!"- A classic call from the not-too-distant past


As exciting as the ending of many of this year's games have been, there's just no longer this kind of shock factor when a big name program falls. When the little guy wins this often, there's no such thing as Cinderella.