The Big Ten Men’s Basketball Tournament tips off today. Now before you get excited about Selection Sunday coming up this weekend, know that is not actually the case. For the first time since it was instituted, the Big Ten Tourney will not be held on the final weekend of the regular season.
Instead, conference officials–in yet another money grab–agreed to hold the tournament a week earlier so they could play in that hotbed of Big Ten Basketball: Madison Square Garden in New York. MSG is not available during traditional Championship Week because the Big East plays its conference tourney there. That basically relegates the Big Ten to JV status–playing at the same time as such powerhouses as the Patriot League and the Horizon League. And we’re not talking about the “real” Big East when Syracuse, Georgetown and Villanova were national powers. We are talking about the Marquette, Creighton, Butler Big East–which just adds further insult to injury.
Although, the watered down Big East will likely still pack in bigger crowds for their tournament games that the Big Ten will. The average conference campus is more than 650-miles from Madison Square Garden. And hotel rooms in New York City are much more expensive than the usual conference tournament host sites of Indianapolis or Chicago. The one bright spot is that attendance should be better than last year’s Big Ten Tournament in Washington, DC which conjured up the phrase “Plenty of good seats still available” every time there would be a shot of the stands on TV.
This downgrading of what should be the premier event of the Big Ten Basketball season is part of the conference’s misguided efforts to make New York and Washington “Big Ten cities”. While there is certainly fan interest and media coverage of Maryland Basketball in the nation’s capital, nobody in NYC gives a rat’s behind about Rutgers. I would be willing to bet there are more alumni of Big Ten schools in New York than there are fans of the Scarlet Knights in the entire country. But is that interest worthy of having the conference tournament moved out of its regular timeslot and playing second fiddle to everything else that goes on in NYC when it could be the biggest thing going on in Indy, Milwaukee or Detroit?
And any “inroads” the conference may make this week will be quickly forgotten next week when the Big East Tournament at Madison Square Garden itself gets overshadowed by the Atlantic Coast Conference tourney taking over the Barclays Center in Brooklyn at the same time. The ACC will be coming to town with number one ranked Virginia and the Duke Blue Devils–who are reviled by even the most casual college basketball fan. By Selection Sunday, you’d be hard pressed to even remember who won the Big Ten Championship.
Perhaps most importantly, how will this early tournament affect Big Ten teams that do make the Big Dance? Those knocked out in the quarterfinals will go two weeks without playing a game. The conference championship game participants a week-and-a-half. You ask any coach and he’d tell you it’s best to play every third day to stay sharp. When the Big Ten fails to get anyone to the second weekend of the NCAA tournament I hope that conference officials can take time away from counting their money and consider the negative effects of their short-sighted decisions.
