Written by Joseph Nardone at Bloguin
College basketball faces an important season. More rule changes have been put in place, with the 30-second shot clock being at the forefront of possible scrutiny, and the game itself continues to be bashed by casual fans for its lack of entertaining play.
A point I have made in the past, which certainly can’t be touched on enough, is that college basketball can never be what many want it to be. With over 300 Division I programs in the land, there simply isn’t enough talent which would allow the sport to flourish in some of the offensive ways many would like. To put it more plainly: College basketball will never be as fluid a game as the NBA — and, yet, there is nothing wrong with that.
The central issue college basketball has is that it sometimes tries to venture outside its own identity. An example emerges when March Madness hits and networks decide it is time to pull NBA personalities from all over creation, instead of creating new college basketball media stars, they feature the NBA folk during the sport’s largest event.
That takes away from what college basketball is. Amateur shooty hoops is not the NBA, and never will be. The people helping to run the sport should try to distance themselves from their professional counterparts as much as possible; embracing an NBA-centric voice in March is making the sport cannibalize itself for not being what it can never become.
Unfortunately, there is more to be concerned about.
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