Written by Joseph Nardone at Bloguin
College football and the NFL will continue to dominate the headlines, sure. The NBA will likely get more eyeballs, because folks like high-quality hoops. However, there are many reasons why people should pay attention to the early portion of the college basketball season.
Don’t get me wrong. College basketball has a lot of things going against it. Some of it is its own actual doing. Others happen to be things the sport can’t fix because it is something that can’t literally be done. However, one of its best attributes is often overlooked, since it gets lost in the “other sports” shoved down our throats like a candy corn no one actually wants to eat after Halloween.
Simply put: College basketball opens with a bang.
This is not to say other sports don’t, but the lengths to which college basketball goes to put on a show early in the non-conference schedule is amazing. With a plethora of good-to-great season-opening tournaments such as the Maui Invitational and the Puerto Rico Tip-Off, there’s a something for everyone.
ESPN will happily provide 24 hours of continuous basketball to unofficially start the season. While some of these games (the ones in the early-morning hours on Tuesday, Nov. 17) will be less appealing than the early-season tournaments on the slate, it is still a tremendous way to prepare fans for the craziness which will play out over the next few months. Plus, given the types of teams taking advantage of matinee, late-afternoon, prime-time, and bar-is-closing time slots, the 24-hour marathon gives every fan a chance to see off-the-radar programs.
Why is this all so important? Because true urgency exists in college basketball, the type which is rivaled only by college football.
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