With the Money Conferences and the courts doing everything they possibly can to squeeze the smaller schools out of relevance in college athletics, next season is a time to be rooting for the little guys. So . . . Come on, Big East and Atlantic 10. Not just them, of course, but they are the two non-money conferences that beat out money conferences in the final conference RPI standings last season.
The eventual casualty from all this maneuvering in meeting rooms in the off-season and in the courtrooms is that the NCAA tournament is in grave danger – at least as we know it. They all SAY that the big conferences will never kill the goose that laid the golden egg – but to them that egg is not the Big Dance or anything related to basketball, but football on TV. Nothing else matters, not even their sanctimonious declarations that they are trying to get "appropriate compensation" for the athletes and become a de facto professional league. We all know what they REALLY want is to do is to get the ceiling raised so they can compete for the top athletes no holds barred without having that pesky NCAA saying, "Naughty, naughty."
The bottom line for those of us who love college basketball is that we need for the little guys to beat the money-mongers this year to the point that when the NCAA does get rid of the pesky little guys by creating a new Super Division, they will look like the hypocrites they are in trying to avoid teams that really can beat them – in basketball, at least.
So . . . Go Sun Belt! Go Big East! Go Atlantic 10! For that matter, Go SWAC!
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