Is the Conference Tournament Important?
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Some say no, Rest the star players. Let them heal up from the grind, bruises, and pain it took to win such a weak a conference (Sorry for the sarcasm). Which I can totally agree. As I’m not sure the conference tournament means that much.
Yet lets face it this KU team experienced some hard times coming down the stretch. If it wasn’t for the crappy Big 12 no names beating each other up (sorry again), KU might not have won this title out right.
So I’m starting to get this feeling KU needs a good showing in this Conference tournament if nothing more than to get some swagger back.
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I would like to see it become a tradition that the conference champion be given a bye for the entire tournament and that it be reduced to a four team tourney of the second through fifth place teams. It should just be played by those that are trying to play their way into the Madness.
It should never be 3 in 3, because it prepares the team for nothing in the Madness. It should be 2 in 3.
The only alternative would be a 3 in 6 tournament where all TV and gate proceeds go in equal shares to each of the roster players that season of all 10 teams including the conference champ that participate, i.e., it’s a fund raiser for the players, and a thank you from the NCAA, universities, Media, B12, Big Shoe, agents, agent runners, and Big Gaming for the players making them all so goddamned much money all season. I would especially like Big Gaming to give the Vig it makes to the players. Pay the players and call it a sports enterprise research and development grant to them.
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I like your idea on the conference tournament. Why should the conference champion have to play it’s way in to the championship game? It might even give a little more credence to winning the regular season. I’m on board.
However I’m totally against paying college players. It’s a slippery slope. Where does it end? Already we are seeing the demise of the college game, and they haven’t printed the first checks This whole power five most likely to be some hybrid power four in the near future will destroy everything the college game stands for. Student athletes will be just be an after thought.
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I respect your desire not to turn the college game into the pro game.
So: let’s turn the proceeds from the conference tournament into a fund for post eligibility college education completion. Get all these guys BAs completed after they finish playing!!
This could give the conference tournies a positive educational function!
Rock Chalk!
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I like the idea of just playing teams 7 - 10 in the tourney and let them fight it out for March Madness. It will give us yet another team in the big tourney. And it might create some strange end-of-season outcomes for the teams edging in on the 6 spot, who might not get that extra chance to play for March Madness (if we ever go back to being a weak league with less teams getting in).
Plus… it sort of makes fun of the entire structure, which is a joke anyways.
Kansas should be resting now for the big dance, not wasting time playing league teams a third time.
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I think KU fans underestimate the value of the conference tournament because we never have to worry about fighting to make it in. For the small time schools this is the chance to get their name out there. Helps with recruiting/revenue to the school etc…
Besides that since the Big 12 has only 10 teams now and we are playing each school twice it’s saturating the quality of the tournament because teams have already battled each other. What’s their to gain by playing Baylor, ISU, OU, West Virginia again. Really there isn’t any value to that.
In other power conferences like the ACC, Big 10, Pac 12 your not playing the same school twice anymore so if you get a say Duke/Virginia ACC final that actually has some excitement to it but if KU plays OU in the Big 12 finals its oh really a 3rd matchup… The excitement of it is gone.
