At the end of the 2016-17 NCAA College Basketball season, there were 351 member schools (translation: about 200 too many) with Division 1 classification. Beginning with the 2018-19 season, two more schools will be joining: California Baptist University and the University of North Alabama.
With so many schools within one classification, there is bound to be a large gap between the more established programs and those who are battling for the crumbs. Teams from the smaller conferences are no financial match for the larger schools with gargantuan athletic department budgets, particularly those with major football programs.
Gotta Pay The Bills
Just a peek at some of the recently-published NCAA Division 1 basketball schedules for 2017-18 (and those of previous seasons) reveals which programs are struggling to make ends meet. There are, unfortunately, too many schools forced to play most or all of their pre-conference schedules on the road – usually against far superior competition – for guaranteed paydays in an effort to cut their athletic department’s financial losses.
For the larger schools, these games are merely tuneups in advance of their conference schedules, while the cash-strapped schools are essentially getting paid to play the role of the Washington Generals and their student-athletes spend a major portion of the fall semester traveling to different venues to suffer one humiliating defeat after another.
On The Road With Prairie View A&M
For example, one of the schools we’ll keep an eye on is Prairie View A&M University – located just outside of Houston, Texas – a member of the Southwest Athletic Conference (SWAC), with a pre-conference travel schedule in November and December of 2017 that would have the average NBA team running for cover:
- Friday, November 10 at University of Utah (Salt Lake City)
- Monday, November 13 at the University of Oregon (Eugene, Oregon)
- Wednesday, November 15 at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas
- Monday, November 20 vs. Eastern Kentucky (Las Vegas, Nevada)
- Wednesday, November 22 vs Georgia State U. or Eastern Washington (Las Vegas)
- Sunday, December 3 at New Mexico State U. (Las Cruces, NM)
- Wednesday, December 6 at U. of Hawaii (Manoa, Hawaii))
- Saturday, December 9 at Texas A&M University (College Station, Texas)
- Thursday, December 14 at University of Tulsa (Tulsa, Oklahoma)
- Sunday, December 17 at University of Houston (Houston, Texas)
- Wednesday, December 20 at University of Ohio (Athens, Ohio)
- Friday, December 22 at University of New Mexico (Albuquerque, NM)
The games listed above for Prairie View not only represent the pre-conference road schedule, it represents their entire pre-conference schedule. Unfortunately, there is little to gain financially from scheduling non-conference home games and – at least for now – there are none.
But What About The Student-Athletes?
While travel is a normal part of the university student-athlete experience, imagine the challenge of the incoming freshman burdened with that kind of travel schedule, sleeping in strange beds while trying to become acclimated to college-level coursework.
And of course, there is the real possibility of losing most of those games as a result of being out-manned or travel-weary (or both), while trying to maintain good academic standing, then enduring the taunts of classmates upon returning to campus.
There are the occasional feats of strength. For example, Texas Southern University (also a SWAC member), began the 2016-17 campaign with 13 straight non-conference road games, starting with a night game in Arlington, Texas (vs. UT- Arlington) and followed by an afternoon game (2:00 PM) the very next day in Dover, Delaware (vs. Delaware State).
Texas Southern won the second game.
However, that kind of scheduling should be discouraged.
On rare occasions, a small school will visit a school from one of the so-called “power conferences” and walk out with a win. In 2016-17, Savannah State won on the road at Oregon State, Delaware State won at St, John’s, Florida Atlantic won at Ohio State.
But this is not the norm. And too many of the games are simply non-competitive.
Time To Reclassify?
Surely there is some financial reason why this would never happen, but…
The NCAA and many of its member schools would benefit from another basketball classification lower than Division 1 and higher than Division 2, similar to football’s Championship Subdivision (formerly known as Division 1-AA), with a post-season tournament supplanting the National Invitational Tournament.
About half of the current Division 1 basketball schools could move to a lower division and there would still be enough strong programs for a 64-team postseason national tournament on both levels.
As it stands now, the champions from the smaller conferences, especially those with the lower RPI ratings, are almost guaranteed a 15th or 16th tournament seed, a play-in game at Dayton against another small conference winner, followed by (should they win that game) a matchup against one of the nation’s top four teams, usually within a short drive of the stronger program’s campus (vs. Duke at Greensboro, for example) – essentially a road game.
Great experience. Season over.
The following year, those schools are back on the road again in November and December.
This Is Not Trickle-Down Economics
Of course, there could still be a few preseason games matching teams from different classifications, but the concept of having a team spending two months flying around the country getting hammered by stronger opponents for pay that doesn’t trickle down to the athletes is inhumane, especially when many of those athletes won’t make a living playing the sport and others (we’ll dive into the statistics in a later post) may not earn a degree.
Meanwhile, for every Kentucky or Duke there are scores of smaller schools mistakenly believing they will become the next Gonzaga – a mid-major turned perennial powerhouse.
Being a Division 1 member carries a certain level of prestige, but the playing field is far from level. The high school federations across the country seem to have gotten it right. The colleges have a responsibility to put its student-athletes in the best position to succeed academically and athletically.
Studying biology is challenging enough while sitting in the school library; it must be especially tough during airplane turbulence after chasing NBA prospects around for two hours.
Let’s give these kids a chance.
