The Beauty of the Early Inter-Conference Basketball Battles
Early season tournaments have been a staple of college basketball for years and years. Not only is it a great excuse for fans to travel over the holidays (there are tournaments in Hawaii, Bermuda, Las Vegas, etc.), but these tournaments generate lots of interest because of the matchups they present. Much of the early college hoops season is padded with the big boys taking on the smaller stepchild-programs to accumulate wins. The great early season tournament matchups are what get people excited about conference play and give fans perspective on how good or bad their team will be over the course of the season.
The greatest implementation of these “tournaments” is in the conference versus conference challenges. Technically, they aren’t tournaments in the traditional sense, but teams from one conference are pitted against teams from another conference in a best-of format. The conference with the most wins, wins the challenge. The ACC/Big Ten Challenge has been going on for 13 years. The ACC is 10-3, with the Big 10 on a three-year winning streak. Generally speaking, these are two of the best basketball conferences in the country each year. The interest and exposure that the ACC/Big Ten Challenge creates has caused the other conferences to follow suit. There is the Pac-12/Big 12 Hardwood Series and the Big East and SEC have now begun an early season face-off set. All Big Six conferences are now enmeshed in inter-conference tussles at the beginning of each season.
The best part about it is that all of these schools that play each other are big name programs. Many have had a lot of success on the court. For instance, Florida played Syracuse tough in New York on December 2. Those are two top-10 teams that will be on the leaderboard of their respective conferences all year. North Carolina, who was the en vogue pick to win the national championship this year, learned that Bo Ryan’s Wisconsin team can play some serious ball on the road. It’s an opportunity for a fan to see his or her team get a big win early on. In college basketball, the body of work is the biggest thing for NCAA tournament committee voters. These series help add a quality opponent ratio for bubble teams. This opportunity for a team like LSU, who won’t have too many national TV games, provides them with a national audience against Rutgers for at least once during the season. In turn, that helps bring in students and fans and ultimately dollars, which is what everybody wants.
Most simplistically, though, it facilitates school and conference pride. It enhances the college arena atmosphere. Wouldn’t it be great to know that your Big East school beat an SEC school pretty good and that the Big East won two-thirds of their games against the SEC? Those are bragging rights for the entire season until tournament time. It builds new rivalries and spikes fan interest that may not always be there so early on.
Of course, this is college basketball and we know that come tournament time, everything flies out the window. The little stepchild-program jumps up and becomes the Cinderella of March. But it’s a process. The bigger programs need great early season matchups to suck fans in. Then those fans are riding a wave that lasts all season long. With all of the poor publicity swirling around college athletics lately, this is something that the NCAA and college basketball has done right. These games can give you a preview of what’s to come during the tournament. Georgetown’s last second buzzer-beater on the road at Alabama was an early season highlight. College basketball thrives on those moments. These matchups provide them.
