With the men’s NCAA basketball tournament underway and March Madness in full swing, I thought I’d remind you if your bracket isn’t ruined by now, it will be. You know that one guy you’re friends with on Facebook who feels like he has to mention how his bracket is in the 95th percentile on ESPN.com? Yeah, his bracket is screwed as well. All of ours are.
Professor Jonathan Mattingly at Duke University calculated that the odds of obtaining a flawless bracket are one in 2.4 trillion. Yeah, that’s right: trillion. This newly acquired number is actually rather optimistic, as the previously held odds were about one in 9.2 quintillion. To put this into perspective, there’s a significantly higher chance you, the reader, could become president of the U.S. one day.
But even with near-impossible odds stacked against them, why do millions of sports fans excitedly pencil in college basketball brackets every March?
My theory is personal bracket filling is the only remaining aspect of college basketball we fans can count on.
Men’s college basketball has spent the last decade declining into the shadows of our country’s other major sports. This has absolutely nothing to do with the professional versus amateur argument. College football is currently the third most popular sporting event in America, ahead of both men’s pro basketball and ice hockey. Where’s college basketball? Sitting eighth on the list, with its popularity cut in half since 1985.
So, how can college football be significantly more popular than college basketball? Both are college-level sports with strong and passionate fan bases (thanks to alumni associations and family histories with each university). The answers are consistency and personal connection.
Fans tend to cling to consistency, in all forms of the word. In sports, consistency is the best thing you could ask for. Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors going on a 20-game win streak is exciting and great for basketball. Tom Brady completing 28 of 30 passes on a Sunday leaves Patriots fans ecstatic and Dolphins fans sobbing. Chipper Jones playing all 19 seasons of his MLB career for the Atlanta Braves resulted in a bond so tight many fans cried as he took the field one last time. Consistency allows for closer connections with players, resulting in a more fulfilling enjoyment of watching any team play.
What ruined college basketball wasn’t the lack of scoring or roster depth. It was the infamous “one-and-done” rule, in which skilled players attend college for one season before abandoning ship for the much more lucrative NBA. The result has been a never-ending revolving door of players, forcing us fans to learn new names each season. All the while, the best players leave us once the final buzzer goes off in March.
This growing distance between college basketball fans and the players who simply use the platform as an NBA stepping stone has polarized both groups. Despite having never met the athletes themselves, fans often form family-like bonds with the players who stick around and actually play for the team.
And this is what I believe is at the core of college basketball’s decline: the loss of trust. The feeling that your school is No. 2 in the minds of these 18-year-old players while the paycheck from Nike waiting for them in the professional world is No. 1. But you can’t blame the players for taking the most efficient road to success, can you?
This is not the fault of the players, but instead it is the fault of the system allowing it. It’s not that the players are necessarily more selfish or transient, but instead that many fans believe them to be playing for the name on the back of the jersey, instead of the one on the front.
Andrew Hall is a UF finance sophomore. His column appears on Thursdays.
