Is anyone else mad as hell....

[StLouBlue]

The product is still college basketball, kids will still be coming to play at the non-BCS schools because they can get an education and maybe an opportunity to play after college, a very few in NBA and more overseas. Where it would hurt the most would be in scheduling, but there are already problems in scheduling as we at SLU know. Many BCS schools will not do home & away with non-BCS schools now. I like the idea of seeing the big non-conference games like Arizona coming to SLU or Creighton vs Nebraska or Missouri or Illinois vs SLU and in fact I think many of these will continue no matter what the BCS does, it just makes good economic sense--playing to sellouts that should at least be on regional TV. But if these matchups were to end it would not be the end of the program though.

I don't think there is any way the BCS schools can exclude non-BCS schools from the tournament. There are too many big name schools without football that fans would want to see have a chance at making the tournament. Georgetown, Marquette, Gonzaga, Dayton, Xavier, St Johns to just name a very few as well as football schools which are not in the BCS like BYU, Tulsa, Memphis, Utah and so on.

Now I think the BCS may try to weaken the influence non-BCS schools have in basketball. This will most likely be done by limiting schedules and taking the stronger non-BCS schools and either adding them to the BCS or giving them some consessions that will keep them happy enough. This is kind of already happening if Cincinnati and Louisville jump to the Big East. Even if the Big East splits, odds are the basketball league to form would have a close partnership with the football schools and maybe part of a basketball BCS setup.

What I think the non-BCS schools need to do is make their product stronger where they cannot be ignored. In basketball, I think the bracketbuster weekend is a great idea. It gives teams that are from smaller conferences a chance to be on national television(or at least a larger regional station than normally). I also think that the smaller conferences should be scheduling "challenge" weekends, where say the MVC plays the CUSA. Something like where the top MVC team plays the top CUSA team(using preseason or previous season rankings) and 2nd plays 2nd and on down. The Big10 and ACC are already doing something like this, I think the smaller non-BCS conferences should do this also. It would be a great weekend of basketball for fans of those conferences and possibly show a larger audience the quality of basketball being played. Also it would give us a chance to finally answer the looming question or who was worse, Drake or Houston.