Move NCAA second & third rounds and regionals back two days?
Instead of the second round being Thursday and Friday, why not move it back to Saturday and Sunday when so many more people could see the full days of games? The more limited third round schedule would be more suited to weekdays and evening viewing. The regionals could be moved back two days as well.
It seems the networks would love that second round on a weekend, as would a lot of fans.
March 15th, 2013 at 10:55 AM ^
March 15th, 2013 at 12:55 PM ^
March 15th, 2013 at 11:01 AM ^
Thursday and Friday are a nearly a national holiday. How are you going to watch all those games on a Saturday or Sunday? There will be about 8 going on at one time, so the networks would actually hate it.
March 15th, 2013 at 11:05 AM ^
Play the entire tournament in three days Friday through Sunday.
Friday all pods have first game at 10am, second game at 12:30pm, winners play that night in prime time 7pm. (Highest seed gets the extra 2 hours of rest)
Winners jump on a plane to the regionals which play out the same way on Saturday.
Play the Final Four on Sunday.
Boom. MADNESS.
March 15th, 2013 at 11:13 AM ^
I like this, it's like an 8th grade basketball tournament. Hell, we can screw Adidas and just have the players wear pennys over white undershirts and mismatched shorts.
~Herm
March 15th, 2013 at 11:07 AM ^
Gives me a reasonable excuse to miss 2 days of work. I love it!
March 15th, 2013 at 11:08 AM ^
The players would miss more class that way. The average college student has a pretty light schedule on Friday, so Thursday is generally the only day they're really missing of class under the current format. If you shift things over, they'd be missing Monday and Tuesday, which would affect them a lot more.
March 15th, 2013 at 11:21 AM ^
Pretty funny. Oh wait, were you serious?
March 15th, 2013 at 12:53 PM ^
...if they're playing on Thursday. Open practice at the arena is the day before the game.
March 15th, 2013 at 11:09 AM ^
The real thrill is knowing every single person at work (including your boss) is watching the games, but nobody really acknowledges it.
Until every says f*ck it and heads to the nearest sports bar at 3pm.
March 15th, 2013 at 11:14 AM ^
I will disregard it like so much noise
March 15th, 2013 at 11:18 AM ^
March 15th, 2013 at 11:29 AM ^
I took Thurs and Friday off work already though!
March 15th, 2013 at 11:44 AM ^
But then what would I do in Vegas next Thurs and Fri?
March 15th, 2013 at 12:11 PM ^
^^
This would have saved some folks vacation time!
March 15th, 2013 at 12:32 PM ^
complete the entire tournament in one weekend. Start it on Friday at noon then Saturday morning at 7am at a central location, ie St. Louis.
Then have 4 different arenas for each region. Then play the Final Four (3 games) Sunday night. Boom goes the dynamite.
To me, the real madness of the tournament is have so many games going on during the day on thursday/friday while you are trying to maintain some semblance of normalcy. The madness is trying catch all of the crappy matchups all afternoon because the worst matchup is better than working. Move that to saturday/sunday, and I'm not nearly as interested.
Besides, it doesn't work for the rest of the tournament anyway. If you push back the first weekend of the tournament, you either have to push back everything, which means the Final Four is played on monday (not likely) and the title game is on wednesday (even less likely), or you compress the schedule at some point. Can you imagine making it to the Sweet 16, then playing Sunday, Tuesday. Thursday, Saturday, Monday to win the title?
Yeah and let's play Thanksgiving football games on Saturday.