Izzo says NCAA Tournament should be about the money, not the players or teams
Izzo was talking about smaller teams taking away bids from larger teams and whether that is good for college basketball or not.
A couple of key quotes from Izzo:
Izzo...said he's always been a fan of "the little guys" but that from a business perspective, squeezing out big-name programs like Michigan State presents problems.
"What's happening now, everybody likes the upsets on the first weekend, but I'm not sure moving on that's what's best for the game,"
"It's all about what is best for the financial part of it, if I'm going to be very blunt, more than it is the players and teams,"
Izzo also proposes the committee should have more guys like Jim Boeheim, Roy Williams, and Mike Krzyzewski on it. As a Michigan football fan who is still mad about 1997 and Tom Osborn appealing to the coaches poll, the last thing we need is a bunch of decrepit cronies deciding who should be in the tournament and who shouldn't.
What Izzo seems to miss is the middle tier teams from the P5 conferences aren't always good just because they are from a P5 conference. They routinely get beat by mid-majors and it isn't really an upset.
Maybe Izzo is still trying to wash away that Middle Tennessee State result.
We all saw firsthand in football what occurs when the good ol' boys club gets together. Izzo just wants the Saban treatment (he is unaware he already gets it) and not to sweat being a bubble team again.
“Why should a little thing like wins/losses take away from my ability to receive a championship?!”
It's no surprise why Izzo feels this way: his teams haven't always gotten the bids they've gotten based on merit.
Good Lord, Tom. The smaller conferences generally only get one bid. If MSU or any other mediocre P5 school gets left out, they probably weren't too great anyway. Maybe if some of the smaller schools were excluded this year, Michigan could have made it at 8-24.
Old, out of touch man yells at clouds.
Everyone (not literally) loves, LOVES deep tourney runs by cinderellas. What a stupid statement to make as though it's fact.
And wet fart noises on the financial comment. The financial incentives and constant pursuit of additional dollars is what has continued to degrade sports.
It’s the David v Goliath upsets that keep people watching, which translates to ad revenue.
Izzo almost certainly wouldn't say this if Petitti didn't think this too. And even setting aside that mediocre major conference teams don't deserve to make the tournament over mid-majors, it's impossible to argue that upsets don't increase engagement with March Madness, unless, like Sankey and Petitti, you want to gobble up everything that's great about college sports to satisfy your own greed.
What Izzo also misses is that everyone* is a fan of the underdog, especially on Thursday and Friday when the alternative is work.
The Big Dance makes a ton of money off of that.
*Except, of course, the fans of the favorite.
I used to like upsets a lot when they were still upsets. But now they happen all the time. They are sometimes exciting in the first round, but I do get kind of irritated now when I settle in for a Sweet 16 and see that it's like Oral Roberts or Saint Peters.
Let's have a basketball tournament where the 64 teams are pre-selected before the season is played. And the B1G and SEC should get 32 of the 64 spots.
I'm guessing this was part of the B1G/SEC tete-a-tete and Izzo spoke out loud what was supposed to be kept internal.
We still would have missed it.
I've never seen anyone so determined to kill the golden goose as P5 coaches and commissioners.
To me what is most fascinating about this, is they don't seem to have even the most basic comprehension or understanding of what makes the sport they coach/govern so great.
Letting money become so important it completely blinds you from everything else is a good way to lose everything.
They don't care because in the beginning it will be more money. That is all they care about. Same with the BIG and SEC scorching college football. Its bringing in tons of money right now and will for a while until 1) the other conferences get sick and tired of it and refuse to schedule or play them or 2) everyone finally gets tired of watching Georgia/Alabama vs Michigan/OSU play in between 3 hours worth of commercials and the ratings tank.
True greed is setting $10 billion on fire because it’s split five ways when you’d be happier if the pile was only $1 billion but you get all of it.
That’s basically how these people think.
Okay, so I'm going to say something good about the NCAA.
As much as they get wrong--and they do get so much wrong--they have gotten the basketball tournament format almost exactly right. Nearly half the field get in because they win their conference to earn their way in. The other half get in because they play well throughout the season. It's a perfect balance, the Connecticut Compromise of College Sports. Every team has a path into the tournament, and none of the best teams get left out.
I would hate to see this change.
Except they forgot about the women's game for how long?
The lowly underdog is what makes March Madness the best, most exciting sporting event in sports. Whatever, Tom.
Exactly, which is why I hate that the big ten and sec get 4 autobids in football. I want to see teams like Liberty, the old Boise State teams, and WMU of 2016 make the football tournament and see what they can do against the big boys.
We know what would happen. 2016 wmu lost its bowl game to a 3 loss Wisconsin team. Liberty got shellacked by Oregon this year. Boise state had an epic win against Oklahoma (one of the best games of all time), but it took double OT and every trick play known to man. If they played an Alabama or Georgia or UM equivalent very next week, they probably lose badly, too. Basketball allows in a lot more teams, and can be more flukey. Football isn't analogous.
Usually the blue blood basketball programs win too, but the early rounds still see a mid-major champ beat the 3rd or 4th best Big Ten/SEC/Big East team. If anything, basketball is LESS fluky. Turnovers are easier to recover from. There are so many possessions, a higher percentage of them end in points. And we've seen upsets in FB - ones that have derailed our season and our playoff hopes. These things can and do and would happen, and they're worth it.
College sports aren't just about the big boys.
Just last year, Fairleigh Dickinson beat #1 seed Purdue and Princeton beat #2 seed Arizona. Exciting stuff! There was a Princeton player who had his 15 minutes of fame in that game and the next against Missouri, in which he scored 5 3's. He and my daughter graduated the same year from Evanston Township HS (where, as a freshman, he also made the Sports Center #1 play of the week with a full court shot that won a game). He probably won't go farther than college ball but it's stories like his and Princeton's that make the tournament so great.
Well that's usually when there are a ton of opt outs and apathy. The upset that derailed UM season was a 2 vs 3. It wasn't a mid major.
In basketball, shooting could be ice cold (ie 3/20 from 3), and just 1 player can take over a game since the same 5 play on O and D vs 22. My point is that liberty and ucf are rarely beating the big dogs, and not 3-4 games in a row. And we have seen that, it's not like "oh I wonder what would happen".
Football and Basketball are two different things. You can't have Michigan playing Penn State, Ohio State and Oregon and having an 12-0 record and WMU playing Ball State, Bowling Green and Ohio at 12-0 and saying they are the same thing. How many people were bitching about Michigan's cupcake out of conference schedule these past two years?
A Power 5 schedule is not comparable to a Group of 5 schedule and the records can't be compared the same way.
I loathe him, but no lies are detected on the money matters over the players and teams part. Hashtag Obvi
I'll also begrudgingly come to his defense a bit here. It's hard to tell in a written article if his last comment explicitly about the money being more important than the players or teams was reflecting what he thought should be more important or if it was just a reflection on reality, one that he doesn't necessarily agree with.
I 100% expect that Izzo's interests and thoughts on the tournament and who deserves to be in would not match those of most fans, but I would be hesitant to slam him too much over an article derived from about three, sentence-length quotes.
Dude is a fraud of a coach, yeah let's eliminate the smaller schools that expose you Tom. No consideration for athletes at smaller schools who work their tail off to make the dance and what it means to them and their institutions. Reminds me of when Mork decided it was cool to play football on a Friday night and detract from the HS football scene, that's an unwritten rule in college football, Friday is for high schools and local communities. These guys are tone deaf.
Still salty about Middle Tennessee State, I suppose...
What's good for Tom Izzo is good for America.
What I hate most about this isn't Izzo trying to situate his bubble-ass program for the future, but how you know Tony Petitti heard it, believed it, and is right now trying to strongarm the NCAA into giving the Big Ten a dozen autobids at the expense of the low majors.
This is the problem with having "The Big Two Conferences" try to dominate everything. Sankey would be right there with Izzo and Petitti on this (he is mentioned in the article).
The B1G & SEC are perfectly happy cutting out the majority of football and basketball programs because they want all the money and can't stand the shame of losing to them.
Except that in this case there is a LOT of money on the other side of the table. A billion in ad revenues, a couple of billion at the betting parlors...
This is most of the NCAA's revenue for the year. They might be willing to do Petitti's bidding where football is concerned but if he pressed this he'd be reaching into their wallets. And in the unlikely chance they don't understand that, CBS/Turner/Draftkings/MGM etc. do.
While it was an emotional decision in the fall, this offseason I more and more wish Michigan had left the Big Ten and replicated ND to prop up the ACC and B12. It probably wouldn't have been the "right" decision financially. But it would pretty much stop the Big Ten's push to make a super 2 in its tracks.
And IF super conferences are inevitable - they shouldn't be constructed in such a way that rends the super conference regular season moot in every revenue sport.
ND will join a conference in the next 5-7 years. Trying to emulate that would slightly delay the inevitable at a major cost to UM ($$, reputation, rivalries, prestige). Cutting off nose to spite face. No thanks.
I don't see it that way. It's taking a risk to create a different model that gives big schools clout but doesn't resign smaller schools outside the club to irrelevance. I used to hate ND's independence but preserving the ACC, even if FSU and Clemson leave, is good for them and probably good for CFB too.
I think the M-OSU rivalry would continue with or without the Big Ten because the networks would want it too much. Every other M rivalry is replaceable to TV execs, and only the MSU one is annual. I think there'd be enough pressure to keep it going as well. But if not, an M-ND renewal would make up for that. ND hasn't lost prestige by not being in a conference - they went to 2 CFPs. Their reputation hasn't declined. I'll give you the financial piece, but I don't believe long term the current track will continue to grow the sport. I could be wrong tho, and either way it will be a while before they've killed the golden goose.
It's not UMs job to be the white knight to save the b12/acc/smaller conferences. They take all the risk, none of the reward. ND felt very slighted by with new playoff format. They will be conference shopping soon enough, methinks. I don't want to trade the other b1g semi-rivalries (Iowa, psu, Wisconsin etc) for NC state, etc. Not to mention the non-football component.
March 21st, 2024 at 12:31 PM ^
sorry to come back so late. You make a good point on UM being the white knight with no reward - I feel like we currently are doing that to some extent in the Big Ten, but it's lower risk so that's fair. As for the rivalries - Iowa feels like a rivalry because of 2016 and because we've seen them the last 3 years, twice in Indy. Wisconsin felt like a rivalry when they were our annual opponent. But the last two years, they haven't. Most of the Big Ten West hasn't felt like they're in the same conference as us anymore. And in the 18+ team era, I don't know that anybody but OSU and MSU will.
It's fair to say that M trying to set up the little guys as an independent isn't the best future. I don't think the super sized Super 2 is really such a great setup either. I know there's no going back, and I don't mind a path forward that prioritizes top schools playing each other - but still leaves windows open for the little guys. What we have now, and what Izzo seems to be advocating, does feel like it kills the golden goose and turns college sports into a more anodyne experience, to me.
I see this same attitude all the time in my work, even with many peers (executives in tech). They think about money, but fail to realize that money is the outcome of having a great product.
You can argue that the product would be better with teams that have larger fan bases, but that is a very different argument than saying we should do it because it makes more money. The former is thinking in the long term about what is inherently better, the latter is about making short term optimizations that may have negative long term impact.
"It's all about what is best for the financial part of it, if I'm going to be very blunt, more than it is the players and teams,"
I sort of believe that the only reason Michigan State is in this year is to get SE Michigan eyeballs, so yes, if that is in any way the case, then it certainly is about the financial part.
That said, that wouldn't undercut the idea that, in reality, making sure that worthy teams truly get their shot and that those teams don't necessarily need to be household names is what a tournament that wants to make money and have a really entertaining narrative would do, right? I can't imagine, for example, that millions are disgusted by the occasional Kentucky / Duke / NC / etc...early exit, or better still, non-presence in a truly bizarre year. To maybe see such things is why millions WATCH.
The powers that be miss this. Their model sees "big school = big fans = big $$$, small school = small fans = small $." But when our team's lose, we hate-watch other teams in the hope they fall flat on their face and all root for the little guy - some under-appreciated, under-loved school overnight becomes the belle of the ball. It's why the legend of Michael Crabtree extends far beyond Lubbock, and why everyone knows St Pete's Mascot. And closer to home, why everyone knows Appy St ;(
How many times have those upsets on the first weekend benefitted his team?
Last night is a perfect example of why I held onto my YTTV account. Wagner v Howard (my wife's alma mater - so I'm biased) was a great game and CSU blew out a Power 5 team still living off a national title a couple years ago. Izzo's just pissed because he's about to go home with his top 3 recruiting class in a few days.
It certainly helped him in 2000(National Champ year, LOL it was a quarter century ago) when they got to play 9 seed Wisconsin in the Final Four.
That was a painfully boring basketball game.
Yes, it was. MSU won 53-41(!)
They also beat 5 seed Florida in the final LOL.
"We need to have the BEST teams in the tournament!"
- Guy that finished 8th in the B1G and still made the tournament.
The worst part of the annual arguing over the bubble is that pretty much without exception these are all teams that have no shot at winning the tournament anyway. Yes Cinderella and underdog runs are exciting, but at the end of the day these are really just participation trophies when viewed through the tournament's actual purpose: crowning a champion.
I agree that conference winners should get autobids, but beyond that I would have no problem shrinking the tournament so that only the conference winners and at large teams with a legitimate shot at winning get in. You could shrink it from 68 to 48 (32 autobids and 16 at large) and I don't think a single champion would have changed...
You could shrink it from 68 to 48 (32 autobids and 16 at large) and I don't think a single champion would have changed...
One of the things which makes March Madness exciting are the last possession deciding finishes. With all of those amazing end of game finishes, I don't think you could replicate a repeat champion in any of the formats you listed.
I'm no Izzo fan, but you cut out the part in between those two bottom quotes
Izzo said that might offer a good incentive to expand the tournament beyond its current 68-team makeup, but that money will be the ultimate driver either way.
He's not saying that money SHOULD be the driver to the detriment of players and teams, he's saying that he understands money IS going to be the deciding factor.
His point that big programs like his should get the benefit of the doubt certainly is a typical Izzo whine, but it's right in line with the stance the B1G has taken in football, and presumably will be pushing for in other sports as well as they get bigger and bigger.
Izzo is in a position to influence. Instead of using his influence to do what is good for the game/sport, he is using it to push a monetary bureaucratic conference agenda. It's a choice. It may not be easy, but it is still a choice. Harbaugh used his position to push for good things for players, it brought a lot of consequences, but Harbaugh can look in the mirror and be proud. Izzo probably isn't tall enough to look in the mirror.
I agree with you. OP misrepresented the quote and that was Izzo's intent. But the thing is, Izzo is arguing for screwing over the little guy for the big money teams and saying what's good for the big money teams is good for the sport. So indirectly he's saying money will dictate things, "as it should."
He's kind of talking out of both sides of his mouth. Major conference teams should get bids over small-conference auto-bids, but if we keep auto-bids, then the best way forward is to expand the field so major conference teams on the bubble can get more bids - but that money will be the determining factor as to whether or not tournament expansion happens.