(11-21-2020 10:07 AM)schmolik Wrote: (11-21-2020 09:58 AM)Wahoowa84 Wrote: (11-20-2020 04:30 AM)jedclampett Wrote: (11-19-2020 10:30 PM)Wahoowa84 Wrote: (11-19-2020 08:18 PM)schmolik Wrote: CBS Sports ranked their best teams
https://www.cbssports.com/college-basket...-all-time/
1. Kentucky
2. North Carolina
3. Duke
4. UCLA
5. Kansas
The author developed a real complex formula to calculate an order for best programs. His top 5 programs stand-out for having many more points than the next tier. These top 5 seem to be the universal “blue bloods”.
The points formula calculates performance evenly over the past 80 years. Would probably be better if success over the past 40 years (since the NCAA tournament was expanded) was weighted more heavily.
I disagree, because the CBS article is focusing on the GREATEST TEAMS OF ALL-TIME.
The issue is that success over the past 40 years is not as compelling as "all-time" success AND WHAT EVERYONE WANTS THE MOST IS TO BE ONE OF THE GREATEST TEAMS OF "ALL-TIME" (i.e., the truest of the true "blue bloods").
Anyone who wants to compile a list of the greatest teams over the past 40 years is, of course, free to do so, as could anyone who wants to compile a list of the greatest over the past 10 or 20 or 30 years, or over the past 50 or 75 years, or since the first NCAA tournament was held. But all of these are arbitrary dates, and all of them will only capture a segment of the audience (e.g., the past 40 years list would appeal mainly to people who are 16 to 50 years old).
The farther back the list goes in time, the more interesting it tends to be.
Why? Because most people are fascinated with the history of the game, and all the interesting and wonderful things that happened in those fabled times.
Also, because the older that you get, the more fascinated you're going to be with our nation's history. I guarantee it!
I believe that the criteria of success in college basketball really changed when the NCAA decided to expand the tournament. Specifically, the expanded tournament made college basketball into a big business. The NCAA made incredible monies on media rights and needed to distribute the wealth. It encouraged universities to align into conferences so that it could “systematically” select tournament participants and distribute revenues.
In my hometown, the Big 5 competition was the big deal...but the standard of success quickly transformed to conference alignment. For example, Villanova winning the Big East and being selected for the NCAA tournament are now major annual goals.
For the elite, blue bloods, the expanded role of the NCAA only had modest impact. UK, UNC, KU, UCLA and Duke have always targeted national recruits, competition and branding. Their focus had already shifted from the NIT to the NCAA post season a few decades earlier.
The impact of the expanded NCAA tournament was on the tier below the blue bloods. The classic example is the 1974 Maryland Terrapins...who I believe were one of the top 2 teams in the entire nation. Yet these Terps get zero points for winning their conference, zero points making the NCAA tournament and zero points for making the Final Four.
The author is using today’s standard of basketball excellence and retroactively applying it to an age where it didn’t apply. Admittedly, I’m not as familiar with the storied history of schools like Western Kentucky. I’m surprised that schools like Maryland, Virginia and Florida didn’t score much higher.
That's why although they say "greatest of all time" I will never respect the champions before the expansion of the tournament as much as the teams today. Sure it was a great accomplishment for John Wooden to win all those tournaments. No way he wins seven straight national championships today. Nine of his ten championships UCLA only had to win four games to win the title and nine of his ten championships only one team per conference were allowed to make it in. Imagine if only one ACC, one Big Ten, one Big East, etc, made the NCAA Tournament vs. the multiple teams from those conferences today.
You really have no idea, do you?
The golden era of college basketball was before the expansion of the NCAA tournament.
Things didn't get better after the expansion, because all the expansion did was allow a lot more Big 10 and SEC and ACC, PAC, and Big 12 teams to play in the tournament. It screwed the hundreds of other teams and made college basketball a lot less interesting and a lot less fun.
Were the games better, back before everything became so highly commercialized and before all the rule changes and the 30 second clocks and all the ticky-tack fouls, and players leaving teams in a year to play in the NBA?
...and the millions of TV/radio timeouts that totally disrupt the flow of the game?
...when it was still very much an amateur sport played by students who happened to be athletes, rather than by pampered (by handlers and agents) semi-professional athletes who happen to become students out of convenience ?
You're damn straight they were!
They were better - - a LOT better beforehand, when the NIT tournament was valued on a nearly equal footing, and when the top conferences didn't utterly dominate the tournament year after year, which they do now.
Then, every game was meaningful, because there weren't as many tournaments, so kids played their hearts out every night - - and they played for the love of the game, rather than for how much money they could earn as bb professionals
You don't have a clue, because you must not have been around back then. I wish you could have been. It was great!
John Wooden is almost certainly the best man who ever coached the game. He was brilliant. Nobody could hold a candle to him, even though there were a lot of great coaches back then.
The game was better. The atmosphere was better.
The fans in the stands were individuals. They didn't all wear the same school colors to every game, conforming to the ridiculous social pressure to do so that exists today. They wore whatever the hell they wanted to, and it was a lot more interesting, as a result.
I still enjoy watching college basketball, but it's just a shadow of what it once was, when almost all the student-athletes stayed at the same school for four years, and the fans got to know them, and they developed a team sense of identity that you could see evolving from year to year, like a family.
You really missed out on something special!