frankthetank wrote:They legitimately believe that they should be getting close to 90% of it (similar to football) with the argument that the "Cinderella" aspect of the tourney means nothing if they're not playing the Goliath power programs that are bringing in the TV viewers and money. (This isn't an entirely unfair argument, as there would be little casual fan appetite if March Madness consisted only of Bracket Buster-type matchups.)
This is what the BCS conferences want people to think. It's not near the slam-dunk they may think. College basketball has plenty of name programs outside the BCS ranks. Connecticut, Georgetown, St. John's, DePaul, Houston, Memphis, Gonzaga, Butler, Marquette, BYU, Temple, to name some...all of these schools once were or currently are major national players in the sport. Some big name programs would be gone (Kentucky, Kansas, Duke, etc.) and that would hurt, but there are still more than enough big name programs around for an NCAA Tournament that would include heavyweights and underdogs. Some of the names would change, but the tourney still would have an underdog feel and be popular.
A BCS basketball tournament, on the other hand, will never have that. And if it does, it will magnify the relative differences between that group of schools. As much as some think there's little similarity between, say, Notre Dame and Evansville on the Division I level, there also is very little similarity between Texas and Iowa State, or Florida and Mississippi State, or Michigan and Northwestern, or USC and Washington State. One set of schools is earning large chunks of money for its conference; the other one athleticially is really no different from a Mountain West or Conference USA school. And at some point the biggest earners are going to realize that and will want to free themselves from the leeches-the Northwesterns, Washington States, Wake Forests, etc.-and downsize the top echelon even more.
