Surely part of it is that things seem like their best whenever you fall in love with it but one reason mid majors make up less of the field is because leagues like Conference USA and the Valley and the A10 have lost Louisville, Memphis, Wichita State, Creighton, Xavier, etc.
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I mean âGood to hear this discussed.â and âItâs time.â both feel pretty much in support of expansion in general.
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Agreed. This would be the worst possible outcome.
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And I think we should be fearful of that because it sure does seem like the NCAA and their TV buddies have tunnel vision for what makes sense for football. Even then I donât actually think they have a plan other than MORE MORE MORE. Super conferences in a sport with 9 conference games is silly.
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Expanding the playoffs would help a little, but fans know when their team doesnât have much of a chance. The Pistons made the playoffs with Blake Griffin but no one got too excited.
CBB has always had a giant number of teams and the expectation for 98% of them has never been to win a national title. That works OK, but I donât think you can transfer that mindset to the pros. Pro sports fandom is more geared around having a shot at winning at all.
Baseballâs lost a lot of market share over the years and its average fan age is something like 57. The issue of having lots of teams with no chance hurts a lot and theyâre belatedly trying to stem the tide by expanding the playoffs but have ground to make up.
As for the NBA, my nephew just graduated from high school. He likes basketball - heâs a Michigan fan - but has never gotten into the pros because the Pistons have been bad the whole time heâs been a sports fan. The âGoinâ to Workâ teams donât seem that long ago to me as an adult, but they were a generation ago. Thatâs in a 30-team league. You add more teams, and you will have more of that still. You have more teams playing for a single championship, so more of them have to be bad, and will struggle to keep their fanbase.
The NBA seems to be aware of this and thatâs why theyâre launching the NBA Cup. But the problem is that fans in this country arenât programmed to care about an in-season title.
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Well I think thatâs less an issue of league size and more of an overall basketball lack of parity. Presumably adding more teams should add parity though by spreading the player pool out a bit more. Then expand the playoffs a bit and I donât see how itâs any different than what we have now
A lot of US fanbases are fickle but they comeback as soon as the teams are good if thereâs a base.
I donât think âthe bad teams fanbases wonât careâ is a particularly strong argument against expansion. They already donât care. The play in has been decently successful in getting more teams to try as well
Is that really why baseball has slipped so much in popularity? My sense has always been that the games are too long and uneventful, and the league has clung to too many arcane, unfun rules and traditions that donât appeal to a younger audience that doesnât have much nostalgia for the sport.
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weâre getting very far afield here but I do not think the things that led to baseball losing a ton of fans (nigh inaccessible to any kids under a very high level of family wealth, a game not really designed for tv consumption, and a worship of the status quo and the idea of baseball as a perfect self-solving game which led to them ignoring trends in the sport that made it more boring and slower rather than implementing rule changes to improve that) are at all likely to apply to basketball in the next 100 years.
I certainly donât think expanding interleague play or something like that is why baseball lost fans; theyâve had the same number of teams in the league basically forever (26 in 1977, 30 now). maybe they shouldâve tried more expansion 
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Kentucky got to practice at Drakeâs mansion today. Gotta like the candy dispenser.
Drake invites Calipari, Kentucky over during Toronto-based tournament
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The difference is NBA playoff is the better team wins out over the long run in a 7 game series where NCAA is a one and done ordeal.
Yes, MLB does a shitty job of marketing. Not many people know who Mike Trout is when he was considered to be the best player in the league. Playoff isnât the reason why MLB is suffering. As you said, itâs their inability to adjust to the time that hurts them.
Thereâs a lot of reasons. Itâs certainly not the only one. Having games that drag on forever didnât help either. (The pitch clock is a good idea that should have be introduced long ago.)
But having a lot of teams with no chance to win anything is a tough way to keep fans invested.
The NBA recognized the same issue with the play-in games, although I see that as a band-aid.
Deeeeeeep sigh
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Yeah but I bet he wouldnât put up those numbers at Moneyball
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This column is football centric but it lays out a dream scenario for conference alignment that actually makes more sense for the overall sport. It advocates for a more balanced NCAA universe where there are 8 big conferences more evenly balanced competitively and geographically with 8-10 tams each. It also talks about revenue sharing and competitive balance. Thus it will never happenâŚbut fun to dream about in the long off-season. What do you think about this from a basketball point of view?
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Get ready for top 10 Penny
23.8 years old
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This goes here!
Yeah well itâs true
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