UCLA's Move, Conference Realignment Has Hurt College Basketball

UCLA is in both the men's and women's NCAA basketball tournaments as first-time members of the Big Ten. The men's team has a seventh seed and will play 10th-seeded Utah State at Rupp Arena on Thursday.

The women's team, which has achieved its first-ever 30-win season, recently secured the conference tournament title with a win over rival USC and has the No. 1 overall seed. The Bruins will play the winner of UC San Diego and Southern University at Pauley Pavilion on Friday.

Fans of the women's team in Los Angeles will have a much easier time watching the team play than they did at the Big Ten Tournament Championship, held at Gainbridge Fieldhouse in Indianapolis.

Fans of the men's team who live in Los Angeles will either have to travel straight to Kentucky after UCLA lost to Wisconsin in Indiana or make another trip across the country.

There is no reason that this should be the case. Conference realignment has hurt collegiate hoops in a worse way than it did football, forcing fans to either travel distances outside of their region to support the team or watch at home, leading to empty areas for big-time games.

The Big 12 Tournament, in terms of attendance, was an embarrassment, but not as embarrassing as it is to have UCLA and USC, two of the best teams in women's hoops, face off in a place not remotely near the city in which their home arenas reside.

To make matters worse, because of the consolidation of top teams, 14 of the 16 members of the SEC made it into the dance on the men's side. 14. That's 87.5 percent. So, what is the point of the regular season? What's the point of scheduling good non-conference games when basically everyone gets to go?

For a sport already losing its value because of the one-and-done policy (and if you don't think one-and-done has hurt the sport, ask yourself when is the last time you cared about a Duke-North Carolina game), it continues to harm itself with too much travel, too much separation of arenas to the fan base, and just the overall lack of competition to get into the tourney.

College hoops was at its best when players stayed, when they learned the culture of their school, became a part of the student body, and played like ravaged dogs in rivalry games.

College hoops was at its best with legitimate regional rivalries. When the Big East was the Big East, when the Pac-12 was the Pac-12, when a Big Ten game was Ohio State vs. Michigan State, not Ohio State vs. USC.

UCLA should be playing teams like Arizona and Stanford. Not what we see now. To quote Michael Irvin, "We're losing recipes," and in 20 years, no one will care about Georgetown vs. Syracuse or Tennessee vs. UConn.

It is simply a shame.

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