I’ve been a fan of Division 1 Men’s College Basketball for a long time. My oldest memories involve names like Rony Seikaly, Steve Alford, and Danny Manning in National Championships. Steve Smith coldly driving a 17′ dagger into my hometown UWGB Phoenix back in the early-90s on a day when I stayed home “sick” from school. GB getting back to the dance a few years later and knocking off Jason Kidd’s Cal Golden Bears in the first round of the tournament. Larry Johnson and the Runnin’ Rebs annihilating Duke, then coming back and somehow losing to them in the semifinals the next year. Christian Laettner was and still is the baddest motherfucker I’ve ever seen on a college basketball court. Chris Webber’s timeout. Scotty Thurman‘s three to bury Duke in ’94. Tyus Edney‘s drive to beat Missouri in ’95. Bryce Drew’s buzzer beater for Valpo. Rip Hamilton. Juan Dixon. Sean May. The list of March heroes goes on and on.
I’m more interested in college basketball now than ever because – full disclosure – my nephew plays for the University of Northern Iowa. My opinion is certainly biased now, but I felt the same way long before he ever set foot in Cedar Falls. I just figured I’d address the elephant in the room right out of the gate. UNI has some March Madness legends of their own, by the way. Ali Farokhmanesh. Paul Jesperson. If you’ve loved college hoops you know that teams from the Missouri Valley Conference are some of the great Cinderellas in the history of tournament, and are perenially included on every analyst’s “teams you don’t want to face in the first round” list.
Like almost everyone else who loves college hoops I’ve found myself frustrated for the past several seasons. The way the game itself has evolved (a topic for another day), the constant conference realignments, NIL, and the transfer portal are all contributors. I am 100% for players getting a slice of the pie and being able to profit off their name, image and likeness. I’ve been a proponent of for that my entire life. I’m all for player empowerment, but that doesn’t mean the system couldn’t benefit from improvements. It’s nearly impossible to connect with a player or a team anymore when the deck is reshuffled every year. Why do you think people loved Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese so much? Because they’re phenomenal players, but also because we spent four years watching them progress at the same schools. When LSU beat Iowa in the 2023 National Championship, Caitlin Clark didn’t call a press conference to say, “I’m taking my talents to the Bayou” and transfer to LSU for more money on a super team. That’s men’s basketball and it’s ridiculous. Who am I kidding? If they were men they both would’ve gone pro after their freshman season and they’d be sucking for the Washington Wizards now.
My point is, more than ever fans are cheering for a uniform out of habit and have no connection to the players wearing them. As a fan now we finally get accustomed to a team when they hit their stride around midseason and then get to enjoy them for six weeks before another insane offseason starts the process over again.
This leads me to the first move I’d make to improve college basketball. I’m not going to claim that these ideas are original. I avoid most sports talk, so for all I know this idea has been introduced thousands of times – I sure hope it has, anyway – but in case it hasn’t here it is:
You can only enter the transfer portal once without penalty*
I don’t want to see players miss an opportunity to make more money than they’ve ever seen in their lives. I’m sure some players legitimately leave schools not necessarily for money but because they want a greater challenge. Or, on the flip side, players find themselves at the end of the bench and want to find a place where they’ll get playing time. For those players you get one free trip to the portal. After that, if you want to transfer again the old rules apply. You have to sit for a year. This era of players entering the portal every year can’t continue. It’s alienating a large chunk of the college hoops fans who still remain. Again, if you have the opportunity to set up your family with more money than they’ve ever seen I understand that. If you’re just a malcontent who continues to end up at the wrong program, maybe it’s time to look in the mirror. The multiple programs that you’ve transferred in to and out of probably aren’t the problem. Might be time to make the best of it and build some character instead of blaming everyone else and bailing out of every situation you put yourself in.
Here’s the asterisk next to the one-transfer rule: *An exception is made if your head coach leaves the school. The coach is one of the main factors in a player’s school selection. If the coach leaves, the players should be allowed to leave with no punishment.
We good so far? Good, because I’m about to make an abrupt subject change with no segue. I need a moment to give some love to Northern Iowa senior (Graduate senior? I don’t know what we’re calling the 5th year Covid era players) forward Tytan Anderson.
I’ve been watching UNI for a few years now and Ty has placed himself on a short list of my favorite college basketball players I’ve ever watched. I guarantee you’ll never hear someone say, “Imagine what Tytan Anderson could be if he put in 100% effort.” At 6’6″ he’s taller than most humans. He’s an impressive athlete that can run the floor, dunk effortlessly, and bang with the strongest guys in the paint…and yet he’s still undersized for a Division 1 power forward. He battles for every rebound. He’s always attacking the basket. Rarely (never?) settles for a bad shot. Wears his heart on his sleeve. A joy to watch every single game. If Ty had jumped ship for better money, a bigger school, or more fame elsewhere I wouldn’t have blamed him or thought any less of him. I also wouldn’t be writing about him. Instead, every UNI Panther fan gets to point at Tytan Anderson and say “that’s our guy” forever. I don’t know how much more money he could’ve made this season if he was playing in a larger conference – I’m assuming the offers would’ve been there had he chosen to enter the portal – but I’m guessing the amount is significant. Instead he stayed at UNI where he’ll be beloved forever. I’m not sure what kind of price tag you can put on that. I’d like to think that guy will never pay for a drink in the Cedar Falls/Waterloo region for the rest of his life. I think Tytan Anderson has a lucrative career ahead of him as a professional basketball player after this that could take him all over the world. He will be able to pursue his pro basketball dream if he chooses to. He can also rest assured that as soon as he decides to hang up the sneakers, if he chooses to settle in the Cedar Falls area I assume he’ll have a long list of employers eagerly awaiting him and his degree from UNI. The people there know Tytan Anderson and what he’s about. That’s gotta be worth something. You’re not getting that if you transfer every year. I sincerely hope it was worth it for him and every other player around the country who could’ve left for so-called greener pastures but chose to stay. I wish there were more Tytan Andersons in college basketball. More accurately, I wish the college basketball landscape was such that Tytan Anderson felt like the norm instead of an exception. When Selection Sunday comes I’d like nothing more than to hear one of the CBS commentators warn viewers to, “Look out for a guy by the name of Tytan Anderson in this matchup…”
Because I’m a curious person (psycho) who loves Excel spreadsheets, I did a little experiment last year. I tracked every single Missouri Valley Conference player who entered the transfer portal. I don’t claim that this list is 100% accurate as I had to rely on internet research on sites like verbalcommits.com for my information. I don’t have a research department. By my count 86 Missouri Valley players entered the transfer portal last year. If every team has 15 players on the roster, that’s 48% of the conference. Six of the players that entered the portal ultimately stayed, so make it 44%. Regardless, a large chunk of that remaining 56% was graduating seniors/players who used up all of their eligibility. I didn’t have enough foresight to add that to my spreadsheet last year so I don’t have the number, but it’s safe to say more than 6% of the conference graduated (or ran out of eligibility), so we’re left with less than half of the 2023-2024 MVC players coming back to their teams in 2024-2025.
More importantly, there are 16 All-MVC players every year (not sure why six players get First Team honors). Of the 16 All-MVC players in 2024, three were graduating seniors. That means we should get half of them back this year and have 7-8 returning All-MVC players, right? I think you know where I’m going with this. 12 of the 13 All-MVC players who were eligible to return transferred out. Only Bradley Guard Duke Deen is back this year. 100% of last year’s MVC All-Newcomer Team transferred out of the conference as well. They came to The Valley for one year and bounced. Where did they all go? Most of them “upgraded”. What do I mean by that? The Missouri Valley Conference was ranked 10th out of the 31 Division 1 conferences last season according to RPI rankings. Every one of the All-MVC players moved to a team that plays in a conference with a higher ranking. 14 of the 86 MVC players that entered the portal (16%) went to Power Four Conferences. 34% total moved to conferences ranked higher than the MVC.
What’s my point? To me, the Missouri Valley Conference has always been THE pinnacle of mid-major conferences in the NCAA. The MVC Championship Game on the Sunday one week before Selection Sunday is always the unofficial start of Championship Week. It’s actually broadcast on CBS. Not buried on cable or streaming. Until recently Valley teams entering the Big Dance were always dangerous because they had the perfect combination of talent and experience. You didn’t get too many (if any) MVC players jumping to the pros early, so you could always count on at least one team from the conference to bring their combination of senior leadership and talent to slay a giant in the tournament. Again, see the 9th seeded Northern Iowa Panthers taking down #1 Kansas in 2010. Now I fear those days are gone. The Valley has only sent one at-large team to the NCAA Tournament since 2016 and they seem to be headed in that direction again this year. Why?
First, Wichita State and Creighton jumped ship, taking away two of the stronger programs in the conference. Loyola Chicago came and went relatively quickly. Then the transfer portal and NIL happened. I fear many players view MVC schools as stepping stones now. 12 of the 13 All-MVC players and all five of the All-Newcomers did last year anyway. Difficult to build a team that can take down powerhouses when your strength used to be continuity and senior leadership and now that’s practically gone. Everyone wants to get into those Power Four Conferences now for various reasons. By the way, there were five power conferences until this year. Big conferences are devouring each other now (R.I.P. Pac-12). It won’t be long until they join forces and become one gigantic league of their own…and they’ll still call it the Big Ten even though it’ll have 50 teams, like keeping the same name will make it feel like tradition still matters.
Even when my nephew signed with UNI I had people I knew saying, “Give him a year or two and he’ll be in the Big Ten.” Umm…you don’t know him. Also, why do people think that a full scholarship to the University of Northern Iowa – a storied Division 1 program with an amazing coaching staff that plays in one of the best conferences in the country – is some kind of disappointment or consolation prize? Why don’t the NCAA, the programs, the fans, or even many of the players value the mid-majors anymore?
Wednesday night our beloved UNI Panthers won their sixth in a row. A gutty 82-75 road win against a terrifying Belmont team in which the Panthers faced a 29-10 deficit ten minutes into the game before clawing (no pun intended) their way back. The Panthers are now 19-9. They’ve fought back to within one game of conference leader Drake despite losing two starters to injury. Shout out to RJ Taylor and Leon Bond. I miss seeing you guys on the court. I checked out Inside College Basketball on CBS Sports Network at the end of the night and there was no mention of it. Most of the show focused on the big SEC games of the night. Missouri over Alabama and Auburn over Arkansas. At one point former player and current analyst Wally Szczerbiak made a statement that caused my blood to boil. He said that he believes 13 teams from the SEC belong in the NCAA Tournament and that “fans want to see the best players and the best teams.” I wholeheartedly disagree Mr. Szczerbiak, and you should know better than to lazily assume that the “best players” are in the power conferences.
See, Wally Szczerbiak played for Miami. Not the south-Florida power conference Miami Hurricanes, the mid-major university in Ohio. The Miami University Redhawks, to be exact. Szczerbiak led them to the Sweet 16 in 1999. One of the great mid-major tournament runs of my lifetime. That same Miami team lost their conference championship to Kent State and made it to the tournament as an at-large team. Ironically, if 2025 Wally Szczerbiak sat on the 1999 tournament selection committee he would’ve replaced Miami in that tournament with an 8-12 SEC team because they had a better RPI and more Quad I wins and the NCAA Tournament run that made him famous would’ve never happened and he probably wouldn’t be on TV now.
Szczerbiak was making an argument for the John Calipari-led Arkansas Razorbacks. Arkansas is currently 4-9 in the SEC. 4-9!!! I don’t care how strong you think you are and how good your conference claims to be. I don’t care what your SOS and RPI and BPI and fucking KenPom are. If you played 13 conference games and only won four of them you can’t look at me with a straight face and say you deserve to play for the National Championship. Meanwhile, over at ESPN’s Bracketology they have 37 teams from the SEC, Big Ten, Big 12, ACC, and Big East with a better than 50% chance at making the Tournament. The other 26 conferences combined have nine. The only one from the Valley even getting a sniff is Drake.
You know what I hate in the NCAA Tournament? 8/9, 7/10, or 6/11 games that feature middle-of-the-pack major conference teams, especially if they couldn’t even go .500. I watch 0% of them. You know who else hates them? Everyone except for the fans of the teams playing in them…and gamblers, probably. You know what we love? Seeing David get a shot at Goliath. So put more Davids in the tournament. 4-9 Arkansas should have to put all of their eggs in the Conference Tournament Automatic Bid basket the same way every team in the 26 other conferences have to. I don’t care how famous their coach is and I definitely don’t care how much revenue their conference’s TV deals are generating. That leads me to my next rule:
No team that either went sub-.500 or finished in the bottom half of their conference can get an automatic bid to the tournament.
This is a great rule for a few reasons. First off, it doesn’t affect as many schools as you might think. Right now we’re talking about so-called bubble teams – Vanderbilt, Texas, Arkansas, Georgia, LSU, Nebraska, Ohio State, USC, Indiana, Northwestern, Minnesota, Rutgers, West Virginia, Cincinnati, Utah, Kansas State, Arizona State, Pitt, Georgetown, and Butler – most of whom aren’t going to make the tournament anyway. Get them out of the conversation. 5-to-7 of them will likely make it, though, and they’ll take spots from deserving mid-major teams like George Mason, Boise State, North Texas, Bradley, UC Irvine, and yes, Northern Iowa.
The other benefit to this rule is that it adds so much more intrigue to the regular season. Analysts would be frothing at the mouth every night talking about which teams would qualify for the bubble. Right now the Kansas Jayhawks – who were ranked #1 in the country in the preseason polls – sit at 8-7 in the Big 12. How much more fun would these final two weeks of the regular season be if .500 teams like them had to play their asses off just to be considered for an at-large bid as opposed to Kansas just coasting to the finish because they know they’re a lock to get in anyway?
If there was some deterrent for these teams to change conferences on a whim it wouldn’t happen so often. You want to make a 20-team power conference? Have at it. No more than ten of you are making the tournament no matter what KenPom says. No more talk of 13 teams from the same conference (unless you’re a 26-team conference…which will likely happen sooner than later). The only people who would rather see Arkansas than George Mason or Bradley or Northern Iowa are a few people in Arkansas (Arkansasians? Arkansites?) and apparently Wally Szczerbiak.
I continue to mention Northern Iowa because I follow them, but I could be talking about dozens of other mid-major programs who win consistently and get zero love from the selection committee come March because they don’t look as good on paper. I can feel fans of mid-major teams nodding their heads while reading this. In the Valley alone I see at least five teams – Drake, UNI, Bradley, Belmont, and Illinois State – that could pull off upsets in the first round of the NCAA Tournament given the chance. We’ll never find out because the power conferences have the tournament on lock. I’ve just offered two adjustments that would make college basketball far more fun for the fans. College basketball viewership is dropping. Down 21% from last year according to numerous sources. Something needs to be done to keep people interested. I’m sure the NCAA’s answer will be bigger conferences with bigger TV deals, and more money for…somebody. That’s not addressing the real problem. If you keep making the game less fun for the fans, we’ll stop buying tickets and paying for your subscription services. Then you can have all the big conferences you want. If people aren’t paying to watch, your power conferences won’t generate money. Then what? They better do something to fix it. I believe they could make the product better while still paying players, keeping the portal open, and keeping their power conferences.
mookiefantana 