2021 NCAA Tournament Proposal: May Madness
Today, as we begin the 2020-21 college basketball season, I have something of an outlandish suggestion for the end of the 2020-21 college basketball season.
Ready for it? It’s a bit nuts, so you’re just going to have to go with me here:
May Madness.
What?
What is May Madness? Like, March Madness, but in May?
Yes, that’s absolutely what I’m suggesting.
And here’s the thing: It actually is not as ridiculous as it sounds, plus my proposal would result in one of the best sports weekends imaginable taking place heading into June.
I’ll explain…
Last week, the NCAA announced they will hold the 2021 Men’s Basketball Tournament in one city in a “controlled environment”. This language is important because it differentiates itself from the “bubble” concept that the NBA used to complete its 2019-20 season.
Sadly this also means that the “Battle in the Bubble” trademark the NCAA applied for now appears to be useless.
The current prevailing plan is to hold the tournament in and around the Indianapolis area.
This seems like a wise idea. NCAA headquarters is located in Indianapolis. Indianapolis and the surrounding areas have multiple facilities capable of hosting such games, plus the large high school gymnasiums in proximity could host practices for the teams (but not games because high school courts are 10 feet shorter).
Many different people have made proposals for how to pull off a tournament held entirely within the confines of one city. The goal here is not to re-litigate any of those ideas, but rather to talk about when to pull off said tournament and what doing so would help accomplish.
Rather than holding unswervingly to keeping the 2021 NCAA Tournament in March, what if the NCAA was willing to push back two months?
Doing so would achieve two main goals. Let’s examine each.
Schedule Flexibility and Margin
There is currently little to no wiggle room in the 2020-21 college basketball schedule.
Take the schedule of the North Carolina Tar Heels, for example. Their first game is today, Wednesday, November 25, against the College of Charleston. Yes, the beginning of the schedule is delayed a couple of weeks from a typical season. For comparison’s sake, the Heels started on November 6, November 6, and November 10 in the previous three seasons.
But the back end of the schedule this season is no different than any non-COVID season. Carolina will end the regular season by hosting Duke on Saturday, March 6. The ACC Tournament then begins on Tuesday, March 9 for the lower seeded teams and runs through the ACC Tournament Final on Saturday, March 13.
Once again for comparison, the final regular season game the previous three years for UNC took place on March 7, March 9, and March 3. As for the ACC Tournament in that same time span, it began on March 10, March 12, and March 6, while ending on March 11 (COVID), March 16, and March 10.
Because of this current lack of margin in the schedule, COVID-related delays will cause players (or even whole teams) to miss 3-5 games during a quarantine, which therefore have minimal chance of being rescheduled.
The current spacing and pacing of the schedule leaves no margin for error. A missed game is a missed game and leaves the Selection Committee dealing with smaller sample sizes of games on a team’s resume when making their NCAA Tournament choices.
If the NCAA was willing to push back the tournament two months (and conferences were willing to adjust their tournaments as well), it would provide ample opportunity for teams to reschedule games and therefore play a more robust slate of games.
This push back in timeline would likely also allow for conferences or schools who have chosen to not play this season (or perhaps delayed their start) the occasion to reconsider that decision.
So benefit number one: Pushing the NCAA Tournament back two months provides greater capacity for teams to play a full regular season’s worth of games.
A Sports-Loaded Memorial Day Weekend
The second major achievement of delaying the NCAA Tournament would allow for the possibility of two of the major annual American sporting events to occur in the same city on the same weekend.
The Indianapolis 500 takes place in Indianapolis every year on the Sunday of Memorial Day weekend.
As you know if you’re reading this article, the two Final Four games typically happen on a Saturday night with the Championship Game played on Monday night. What if the NCAA scheduled the tournament in such a way that the Final Four and Championship would occur on the Saturday and Monday of Memorial Day weekend?
Put those two things together and here’s my proposal for the city of Indianapolis to become the epicenter of the sports world on Memorial Day weekend 2021:
Saturday: Final Four
Sunday: Indianapolis 500
Monday (Memorial Day): National Championship
I fully recognize this idea introduces a whole host of logistical nightmares that would need to be resolved. To name a few:
Hotel rooms.
Traffic.
Restaurants.
I have all the faith that these issues could be ironed out.
Why Not?
In a year already completely altered by COVID-19, what’s a two-month delay for the NCAA Tournament if it means the event actually takes place?
And in this scenario, not only does the tournament take place, but it takes place with schools having played a fuller complement of games and it happens on the same weekend as the Indy 500.
Let’s do it! Your move, NCAA.
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