Volkmar
All American
Posts: 4,382
Joined: Jun 2013
Reputation: 485
I Root For: U.T.S.A.
Location: Richmond, Texas
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RE: Reality Setting In
(03-18-2017 10:03 PM)MU42 Wrote: (03-18-2017 09:24 PM)ThreeifbyLightning Wrote: The disappointment is pretty strong right now.
Not just because we lost a chance to play a Sweet 16 in our home state, but for some other reasons.
First, given the way the landscape of collegiate athletics continues to shift toward the negative and we now know that our 30 wins wasn't going to get us an at large who knows how long it will even be before we get into the tournament and in this position again.
Second, as a follow up to #1, if we couldn't make the Sweet 16 with this team we likely never will. Not being pessimistic. It's just the sobering reality of this sport. This is the best team we've ever had and may stand as the best team we'll ever have for many generations to come.
So very proud of what we have accomplished but also disappointing to realize this may be as good as it gets.
Idk how much better you want it to be. We root for schools that have zero chance of winning national titles in all major sports. It's literally the same 10 schools competing for titles every year in football and basketball. Sure every once in a while a school like Butler, Utah, or Memphis crashes the party, but they never win. We waste so much time hoping this will be our year but the way things are setup it will literally never be our year.
You can go undefeated in football and still not sniff the title game and you can win 30 games in basketball and have to win your conference title game to get into the P5 invitational, and they will set it up so that you play the other non P5 schools to knock each other out. VCU vs St Mary's, Wichita vs Dayton, Rhode Island vs Creighton, and I know it was the second round but MTSU vs Butler. All 8 of those schools are good enough to be sweet 16 teams.
I'm about done. I'm wore down. There is nothing we can do. I'm going to keep rooting for my Herd but what is the point. It's Duke, UNC, Kansas, UK, UConn, Florida, Michigan, Louisville, and Syracuse every year. And football it's Alabama, Ohio St, Florida St, USC, Oklahoma, LSU, Oregon, and ND can go 9-3 and play whatever bowl they want minus the playoff.
The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different outcome. We are all insane if we keep wasting our lives one this stuff.
The operative word there is "expect". Doing the same thing over and over and "expecting" a different result is rather insane. But I don't think anyone really expects MTSU or any other G5 to actually win a national title in basketball or football. It happens on occasion in baseball, and G5 schools have come in 2nd in softball. Smaller schools do sometimes win national titles in hockey also, UConn has won several times in women's basketball, and Marquette, UTEP, and a couple others won long ago in men's basketball. But it likely won't happen again anytime soon in men's basketball, and almost certainly not in football.
And we can demonize the greed and such all we want, but it's also true that the NCAA Tournament and the collegiate football bowl season wouldn't be as big as it is today without that greed. And part of the reason some of us care as much as we do is because of how big it has become. If it weren't all over TV and radio and such, and attendance numbers were small, we likely wouldn't care as much about it in the first place. And don't think for a minute that those brackets we hear so much about every year weren't created to generate even more interest, and make it even bigger.
So we can either get sucked into it all, let it live rent-free in our heads, and then get bent out of shape over the same few programs always winning, or just support our teams and take the rest with a grain of salt. Eventually, at some point, if the ratings and profits start going down, the NCAA will try to make changes. In the meantime, there are frankly other things that are more important for us to worry about.
The cards are definitely stacked against our smaller programs though, in all sports. My younger brother is a graduate of Texas A&M, and during the regular season, their football program enjoyed 7 home games this season, 1 game at a neutral site (in Dallas against Arkansas), and had only 4 away games. It's more of the same in softball, as their softball team is 24-2 right now, and 18 of their 26 were at home, 5 were at neutral sites, and only 3 were away so far. It's the same story for their 14-6 baseball team, as 16 of their first 20 games were in College Station, ONE was away, and the other three were at a neutral site. So it's not just the money, the national exposure, and everything that comes with that, but because of their conference affiliations, facilities, and money, they also get the benefit of playing most of their games at home. It just doesn't get any more stacked than that, but it's not gonna stop me from supporting and enjoying watching my own school play.
(This post was last modified: 03-19-2017 03:07 AM by Volkmar.)
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