Why The NCAA Tournament is Too Big…Seriously.

I’ve discovered something interesting about German television. Most of it is in German.

Given that my entire German vocabulary consists of good day, thank you, you’re welcome and “do you speak English,” that leaves me with three choices; CNN, Disney Channel in German, or blogging. And one can only handle so much CNN. Life without television, go figure.

So without further adieu; random thoughts from across the pond…in English of course.


I am probably the only person on earth who thinks the NCAA tournament field is too big.

I’m not talking about the obnoxious decision to bloat the field beyond 64 teams. I actually think it was too big at 64.

Look I get that there is a spectacular symmetry to the sixteen team brackets; a symmetry by the way that the NCAA happily destroyed for more TV money. I get that the tournament is possibly the most exciting event in U.S. sports. And I’m fully aware that the chances of the NCAA reducing the tournament field are comparable to Disque winning a Nobel Prize.

That does not change my opinion that the tournament is bloated. I complain all the time about college football’s ridiculously exclusive system for determining its de facto national champion. Well college basketball goes to the opposite extreme.

Consider the 16 team monstrosity that is the Big East. All the teams played 30+ regular season games, plus the meaningless conference tournament. And then the NCAA was cordial enough to invite 11 of those 16 to its championship field of 68. That's an awful lot of basketball to eliminate 30% of the conference from the big dance. And people say the NHL’s regular season is meaningless?

In the end, 9 of those 11 teams, including the Mighty Pitt Panther, failed to reach the round of 16. The two that did, each beat another Big East team in the second round. That to me is a staggering indictment of the conference and a case study in how ridiculous the college basketball season has become.

If the NCAA tournament was reduced back to 48 teams and the automatic bids were retained for conference champions; that would force a lot of the fluff teams out and actually make the regular season meaningful. As much as I bash the conference tournaments, they would actually matter if the conference was likely to only get 3 or 4 bids. And that’s how it should be. It completely devalues the regular season when that the 5th best team in a conference gets to play for the NCAA championship, let alone the 11th best.

Even worse, after all those teams get in we still have to listen to the talking heads at TMZSPN moan and complain about the poor 12 loss teams that got excluded.

Fear not however, this will NEVER happen. The NCAA tournament is one of the most lucrative events in sport and the NCAA would never scale back its cash cow. I know the tournament is fantastic. Just understand that everything that happens before that is essentially an exhibition season for college basketball junkies.


Jamie Dixon has built a tremendous program at Pitt but his failures in the tournament can no longer be ignored. Especially given my entire rant above about the regular season being meaningless.

It’s easy to forget that before Dixon and Ben Howland arrived, Pitt had fallen off the Big East map. Under Dixon, the Panthers regularly compete for Big East Championships and get high seeds in March. Pitt basketball has become nationally relevant, which is far more than we can say for their football program.

Unfortunately with each passing year it’s looking more and more like Dixon is a coach who can’t win when it truly matters.

The reality of college sports is that the players turn over every four years (or less); the coaches remain the constant. The results at Pitt have been pretty constant under Dixon; strong regular seasons, high tournament seeds, and early round flameouts. In any given year you might blame the players. Over eight years, you have to look at the coach.

One of two things is happening at Pitt. Either Dixon is not a good enough coach in big games or he recruits players who can not raise their game to championship level. I believe its both. And even if you somehow blame it solely on the talent, keep in mind that Dixon is the person doing the recruiting

Most of us could accept Pitt’s loss to Butler this weekend as a fluke if it were a one time occurrence. Unfortunately, this has become the norm over the past decade plus. Sad as it is, I expected it, (which somehow did not stop me from ruining my brackets). You can not argue that Butler has more talent than Pitt. Nor can you argue that they were more talented than the teams they played on their miracle run to the NCAA championship game last year. That tells me they are extremely well coached and that coaching made the difference on Saturday.

The question is can Dixon do better and/or can Pitt do better?

To the latter, I say no. Pitt is not Duke or North Carolina. It is still a second tier destination in college basketball. Pitt compares perfectly to Syracuse. Jim Boeheim became a coaching legend by consistently producing strong regular season teams. And in Boeheim’s case, final four lightening struck three times in 30+ years. That success, including one national championship makes most people forget the litany or early round failures there. The same thing could easily happen for Dixon at Pitt.

To the former I’m not sure. I am truly skeptical that Dixon is capable of improving as a big game coach after eight years. As for recruiting, it’s absolutely possible that Dixon gets the best talent he can to come to Pitt. I wonder however if he is so set getting players to fit his system that he ignores potentially better offensive players who might be difference makers come tournament time?

I do not believe Pitt has peeked under Dixon or that he should be fired. That means the adjustments need to come from within. The status quo is no longer acceptable in Oakland; improvements need to be made, even if that means Dixon stepping out of his comfort zone.


I blistered the National Hockey League a few weeks back for their impotent handling of the travesty on Long Island. Sadly nothing has changed.

The league continues to hand out embarrassingly light penalties for severe incidents with obvious and predictable results. How many players have to be seriously injured by cheap shots to the head before the NHL hands out a single meaningful punishment?

There is no way to sugar coat this; Colin Campbell and the NHL brass have handled this issue with complete incompetence. The players keep driving elbows in to each other’s brains because they know there are no serious repercussions. And it’s not always the goons and thugs that are doing the dirty work. Now it’s the PAVEL Kubinas and Dany Heatleys of the world as well.

I seriously wonder if Colin Campbell failed third grade. Because that’s usually the point where people figure out there is a correlation between incorrect actions and punishment. It’s why we have prison cells for criminals in this country, to dissuade crime. If Colin Campbell was a judge in the criminal justice system, manslaughter would probably carry a four game suspension. Sadly I fear it may come to that in the NHL.

The league had a perfect opportunity to address the issue at the general manager’s meeting and again failed miserably. More tough talk and impotent action. The NHL continues to tacitly endorse and enable this activity which endangers its players and cheapens its product.

Unfortunately for Penguin fans, Matt Cooke is a big part of the NHL's problem. I previously accepted Cooke as physical player and an instigator who played on the edge and for the most part I respected his overall game. Alas, pretty much since the time Cooke clobbered Marc Savard last year he’s gone over the edge.

I’ve previously resisted the urge to label Cooke a dirty player but I can no longer defend him. At the very least, he’s reckless beyond an acceptable level. Trust me he’s not the only offender in the NHL but we can no longer ignore Cooke’s acts; not when Penguin fans are still boiling about Trevor Gillies. Even worse, those acts are now costing the Penguins points in the standings.

The NHL should come down on Cooke as a repeat offender; no less than ten games for his latest cheap shot. And honestly, Matt Cooke’s day in Pittsburgh should be numbered. I would rather use his cap hit to keep Talbot and Kennedy. I hate that its come to that but Cooke has left us no choice.

My Post Mortem on the Long Island Brawl

I’ve spent the last week trying, and for the most part failing, to get over my anger about what happened on Long Island a week ago Friday.

The entire spectacle was an embarrassment to the National Hockey League, not that the league is intelligent enough to understand that. My position on this incident has not changed over eight days, it’s just been clarified. What happened was a 60 minute premeditated and cowardly assault with intent to injure. It was based not on some noble if misplaced desire to protect the Islanders’ top players; rather on some flimsy vendetta that the Islanders conjured out of mid air. It was, to paraphrase Mario Lemieux, a travesty of sport. A travesty made worse by the NHL’s impotent reaction 24 hours later.

If you think I’m overreacting to all this ask yourself two questions. What would have been the reaction if Matt Martin had landed his cowardly sucker punch from behind and fractured Max Talbot’s jaw or even broken his neck as Todd Bertuzzi did to Steve Moore. And how will you feel if Eric Tangradi is unable to play for a year or more because of his second concussion.

The NHL is doing what it always does, punish the result rather than the action. That would be bad enough if the punishments were proportionate to the crime which they rarely are. It’s a sad truth that if Talbot suffered a career ending injury, Martin likely would have received a 25 to 40 game ban. That would have been woefully inadequate given Martin’s action but certainly more than he got.

Instead the NHL’s lack of action will simply encourage and enable more of this behavior. Consider that the Pens/Islanders game was the third brawl filled game in ten days and little action was taken on the first two. Consider some unknown Colorado hack took a cheap run at Olli Jokinen the next night after he put up four points on the fading Avalanche. It’s a systematic and endemic problem that the NHL does not acknowledge, let alone attempt to fix.

For too long the league has relied on its archaic code of justice to mediate justice. Besides the obvious flaw in having the inmates run the asylum, the simple fact is its not working anymore. Players seem to be losing respect for the so called “code”. What the Islanders did Friday night was a three hour case study in this. As former Penguin Rick Tocchet said last week, players seem more willing to hurt each other today. And Tocchet knows a thing or two about hockey fights.

I might excuse the Islander’s conduct on some level if any member of their organization, player or coach had acknowledged in the slightest that things got out of hand. They steadfastly refused to do so. Instead, they bragged about protecting their players, sending a message and in the most asinine comment I’ve heard this season showing restraint. I guess my memory is foggy. I’m sure I remember Garth Snow wearing a mask when he played goal for the Pens yet he seems like he took one too many slap shots to the cranium.

The NHL should have come out and sent a strong message that this behavior will not be tolerated. When you use the term “DELIBERATE ATTEMPT TO INJURE” in doling out punishment, you are saying that the player committed a crime against the game. They should have suspended both Martin and Trevor Gillies for the remainder of the season for their assaults on Talbot and Tangradi. They should have suspended Jack Capuano five games for complete failure to control his players. They should have suspended Matt Hailey for spending the entire night starting brawls. And yes, Dan Bylsma should have been suspended as required by rule for Eric Godard leaving the bench.

Instead they suspended only three players. Two of the suspensions, for Gillies and Martin, were frighteningly inadequate to the crime. And the Godard suspension, which I agree with, was only by rule and would not have been necessary if the officials had put a stop to the insanity in the second period. None of the other brawlers were suspended.

The obvious message here…fighting is acceptable no matter how badly it gets out of hand. And if you go as far over the line as Gillies and Martin did, the league will talk tough and then give them a slap on the wrist suspension. Compare that to the NBA, hardly a bastion of purity or responsibility which suspended players involved in the Indiana/Detroit brawl for the remainder of the season, about 60 games and the playoffs.

The NBA’s message to its players, that kind of brawling will not be tolerated. The NHL’s message, as long as you don’t cheap shot a guy in the head, you’ll be back the next night. And even if you do, you’ll only sit a few days. Somehow I don’t see that as quite the detriment that the all knowing former goon Colin Campbell does.

Those who continue to profess that the players police themselves will call this an isolated incident. I say that this incident proved how ineffective and counter productive that idea is. The NHL claims that fighting protects the game. I take the opposite view point, I think fighting enables the kind of ugly incident we saw last Friday night. As I said last week, if you believe fighting is necessary to police the game I ask you this…did it work last Friday? Keep in mind that before he tried to end Tangradi’s career for no apparent reason, Gillies fought Eric Godard.

I personally would not mind if they eliminated fighting from the game. Unfortunately, the only way that’s going to happen is if somebody dies on the ice during a fight. I truly believe that. And as much as I would prefer hockey to be fight free, I’m not willing to pay the price of a human life to get there. So I would suggest that the league add a mandatory ten minute misconduct on top of every fight. If fighting is that necessary to police the game then a player should be wiling to pay a 15 minute price. And for those who believe it necessary, I remind you that it all but disappears when the playoffs start.

What is worse is what has happened since. Mario Lemieux, arguably the greatest player in NHL history rightfully called out what happened as a travesty of sport. He criticized both the events itself and the NHL’s pathetic response. His message was right on point and had to be delivered. As a fan, I would want my owner to do exactly that.

Not only was his message ignored, it was summarily dismissed by the NHL and Lemieux was ripped for it by fans and media alike. I found it fascinating that in all the talk of Lemieux being a hypocrite because of the sinful act of employing Matt Cooke, not one person actually contradicted his point. To me that is even more convincing evidence that he was 100% correct.

That said, the universal effort to shoot the messenger was telling. It tells me that there are too many people in the NHL that are more concerned with protecting its archaic code of brutal violence than doing what’s best for the sport. Even as the game’s best player and poster child sits on the sideline with a concussion induced by an unpunished cheap shot to the head, the NHL continues to ignore an obvious problem.

Lemieux has been ripped for not calling out Cooke for his shots on Marc Savard and Fedor Tyutin. The implication is that Lemieux supports Cooke’s actions. Beyond the fact that Lemieux and the Pens never once complained about Cooke’s suspension this argument is blatantly stupid. Ask Andrew Ference what happens when you call out a teammate. Do you think free agents would be lining up to come to Pittsburgh if Mario was calling out his own players?

And for the record, I think the NHL should have suspended Cooke for the hit on Savard and more for the hit on Tyutin. It’s all part of an overall trend of the league not taking these issues seriously enough. And each time that happens, the repercussions are worse. Sadly the NHL just does not get this.

Instead they let a career goon like Campbell dole out obviously inadequate punishments. They continue to rally around small minding thinking and an archaic and useless code. They continue to cheapen their product through unnecessary fights that lead to brawls and worse. They continue to make their stars take a back seat to fourth line goons.

As a lifetime hockey fan, I am grudgingly able to look beyond this. Far too many are not. Hockey is one of the greatest games on earth. Sadly, the NHL is hell bent on making sure many people never find out. We learned that the hard way last weekend.