Put the damn games on campus
North Carolina-Kansas at Allen Fieldhouse last Friday was a useful reminder that non-conference college basketball leans far too heavily on listless neutral site matchups
There were two moments during my time as a beat writer where I endured what wasn’t quite an existential crisis – that sounds a bit dramatic – but an inescapable thought bouncing through my head.
What the fuck am I doing here right now?
One came during the reliably weird COVID-19 men’s basketball season of 2020-21, when Pitt played at Syracuse in a rare weekday afternoon game inside the largest arena in the sport that was empty beyond players, coaches, officials, media and various staffers. That game – an otherwise exciting 63-60 come-from-behind win for the Panthers – took place on Jan. 6, 2021.
The other instance, admittedly, didn’t come with the same kind of weighty historical backdrop.
Two years earlier, that same Pitt program played Saint Louis on the day before Thanksgiving at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. Like our aforementioned insurrection palate cleanser, it was a good game, with the Panthers pulling out a 75-73 victory, but the fact it even took place was undeniably odd. Rather than play somewhere between them or, god forbid, on campus, they opted to meet up at an NBA arena a combined 1,400 miles away from their campuses and did so in the middle of the day. The gym, as you might expect, was close to empty – and this time, there wasn’t even a once-in-a-generation global pandemic that caused it to be that way. An official attendance mark was never released because for anyone there, it could have been done manually.
That matchup was an extreme example of an aggravating trend in college basketball of neutral-site games, the kinds of events that are one of the sport’s defining traits in the opening weeks of every season.
This past week, however, fans were treated to something that can often feel like it’s in short supply – hope.
Kansas and North Carolina played a gem of a game last Friday in which the Jayhawks blew a 20-point lead before recovering to hold on for a 92-89 victory in what Andrew Carter of the Raleigh News & Observer aptly described as a love letter to college basketball. The matchup had everything you could have asked for. It was close and competitive, for one. It was between two of the five most iconic programs in the country, both of which share some important connective tissue.
Most of all, though, the game was played on campus, inside the hallowed walls of Kansas’ Allen Fieldhouse.
What seems like a small distinction is anything but.
The pox of the neutral site game
Neutral-site meetings between teams with no connection to the game site litter the first two months of the college basketball schedule and have for years.
Mind you, being somewhere other than an on-campus venue isn’t inherently a bad thing.
The Maui Invitational is a staple of the college basketball calendar and, more practically, gives you a great excuse to a) not have to see people from high school the night before Thanksgiving or b) allow you to nurse a hangover from going out with people from high school the night before Thanksgiving while actively avoiding your own family on Thanksgiving. The Battle 4 Atlantis regularly attracts a really strong field. The Champions Classic has done a solid job serving as an unofficial kickoff to the season and has done remarkably well in picking perhaps the four most consistently successful programs in the country as its built-in competitors. A watered-down version of the winner-take-all season-opening tournament I suggested last year is coming to life later this month with the Players Era Festival in Las Vegas, which is giving each participating team $1 million payouts.
Still, November and December can feel like a slog, even for die-hard fans like myself. It’s partially due to the necessary filler of a schedule, with power-conference schools beating up on no-name opponents to beef up their win-loss records, but even some of the marquee matchups aren’t as appealing as they could be for some extremely avoidable reasons.
Just look at some of this year’s most anticipated non-conference matchups outside of the major multi-team events.
This past Sunday, a promising Michigan team in Year One under Dusty May played Wake Forest, which figures to be one of the ACC’s best squads this season, not in Winston-Salem, N.C., but in Greensboro, about 30 miles to the east, in a game dubbed the Wolverine-Deacon Challenge (you know, those old, historic rivals.) The event drew 8,905 fans to a 22,000-seat venue.
A day earlier, Baylor knocked off Arkansas in a game at the American Airlines Center in Dallas. That matchup, which featured a pair of top-20 teams, failed to generate much turnstile enthusiasm, either, with only 10,207 people showing up in an NBA arena that seats about 20,000.
Those won’t be the end of the sterile, listless settings, either. Florida and North Carolina will play in December in Charlotte. Auburn and Purdue will meet a few days before Christmas in Birmingham. Texas A&M will play Purdue in Indianapolis in a two-game event dubbed “the Indy Classic” in mid-December. Duke and Kansas are playing in Vegas the Tuesday before Thanksgiving because why not, I guess? Arizona and UCLA, no longer conference mates, took the noble step of signing a multi-year series, but the first of those matchups is occurring in Phoenix, not in Tucson or Westwood.
Individually, none of these games are outrageously egregious. Though you sacrifice a bit of atmosphere, schools like North Carolina and Auburn playing games in their state’s largest cities give the sizable alumni base in the area a chance to watch their team without making a possibly lengthy trip back to the alma mater. It’s the same reason Duke, which has more fans in Midtown Manhattan than the entire state of North Carolina, is playing Illinois at Madison Square Garden in February.
While there’s a rationale behind those arrangements, I can’t say the same for Arkansas’ late-November game against Illinois. For starters, the game is taking place on Thanksgiving Day, but even more inexplicable than that, it’s being held in Kansas City, more than 225 miles away from either campus.
At the very least, one of the poor souls doomed with chronicling the game may encounter just the same thought I did all those years ago in similarly sparse arenas. Let’s just hope nobody storms the Capitol this time.
Thankfully, college basketball’s starting to give people what they want
In a perfectly imperfect sport, there’s ample reason, at least this year, to be encouraged about a more robust non-conference scheduling philosophy from some of college basketball’s best programs.
While North Carolina-Kansas is a bit of an anomaly given the programs in question and the venue, there are some legitimately juicy games that will be happening on campuses over the coming weeks.
On Dec. 4, Auburn will play at Duke in a matchup of the Nos. 5 and 6 teams in the country right now. Alabama and Nate Oats seem almost single-handedly committed to creating compelling theater by taking one of the national title favorites on the road twice for what should be big-time games in tough road environments – at Purdue on Friday and then at North Carolina on Dec. 4. For its troubles, the Crimson Tide will get one headliner at home, when it hosts Creighton on Dec. 14.
Oats isn’t the only coach who has made an admirably ambitious out-of-conference slate. Purdue has games against Alabama and at Marquette. Beyond their game against the Boilermakers, the Golden Eagles are making the trip to Iowa State and Hilton Coliseum on Dec. 4. UConn will take part in on-campus games against Baylor and Texas. Kansas will be making a manageable trip to Omaha, Neb. to take on Creighton. Duke and Arizona will play in Tucson next Friday, the second of two scheduled meetings after last season’s exciting 78-73 victory for the Wildcats at Cameron Indoor Stadium. Gonzaga will travel to San Diego State next Monday in what will soon be a conference game.
Not all of these games are scheduled out of the goodness of some administrator’s or coach’s heart, as several of those bright beacons of fan-friendly hope are part of conference challenges between the Big 12 and Big East, and the SEC and ACC.
They’re all working toward a greater and ultimately worthwhile goal, though.
During a time in which professional and college football dwarf all other sports in terms of fan interest and engagement, college basketball is something of a niche sport for much of the country beyond a few glorious weeks in the spring. It’s an endeavor that thrives on passion, on catering to those who care about it the most in the places where the game feels the most natural and intimate.
Some of these seemingly ill-conceived matchups don’t happen for no reason. The schools, television networks and third-party operators that put them on all derive something from these arrangements, but it’s the fans – who travel hundreds of miles and put up money for a hotel during what’s already a chaotic time on the calendar – who ultimately end up paying the burden for it. And for their troubles, they get a diluted version of the product they’re typically accustomed to receiving.
Not every one of these games is going to be a sold-out Allen Fieldhouse watching two blue bloods trade haymakers. That’s simply not possible.
But virtually any on-campus game between power-conference schools is going to be a whole lot better than whatever the hell you’re going to see in Kansas City on Thanksgiving, a contest whose only value might be providing a refuge from having to watch Cowboys-Giants that afternoon.
Coaches and administrators talk all the time about the complications of scheduling, which is understandable and, for those tasked with having to solve those logistical jigsaw puzzles every year, undoubtedly true.
But some things can (and should) be relatively simple and straightforward – like making it a priority to put college basketball games where they belong.
(Photos: Kansas Athletics, Hawgs Sports Network)