College sports inequities
If you’re like me, your NCAA tournament bracket is a big mess right now. That’s because you had a bunch of teams from the Big East conference in the second, third, and even fourth rounds of the Big Dance. Unfortunately, yesterday was Big Trouble for the Big East. High-seeded teams Georgetown (3), Marquette (6), and Notre Dame (6) all lost, while Villanova (2) barely escaped Robert Morris in overtime.
As I’ve written before, the reason you have so many Marquettes in the NCAA tournament and not a lot of Ohios (who downed Georgetown) is that the field is structured to privilege so-called major conferences. This has big economic implications when it comes to TV, revenue sharing, and national publicity, and smaller schools often get the short end of the stick.
Maybe yesterday’s result is a wake-up call. The major conferences may not be so major anymore. If that’s true, the Robert Morris treatment is patently unfair–to the players, and the students.
-Sam
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- Should government regulate sports?
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