{"id":42677,"date":"2025-07-28T13:15:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-28T13:15:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/42677\/"},"modified":"2025-07-28T13:15:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-28T13:15:08","slug":"better-way-to-learn-lifes-lessonsdont-enlarge-the-ncaa-tournament-shrink-it","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/42677\/","title":{"rendered":"Better Way To Learn Life\u2019s Lessons\u2026Don\u2019t Enlarge The NCAA Tournament, Shrink It!"},"content":{"rendered":"

If you believe Jeff Gilbert\u2019s conclusion that expanding the NCAA basketball tournament is a bad idea\u2026consider another reality about sports, more sports, and sports to the point of it losing its competitive savor.\u00a0 The numbers don\u2019t lie.<\/p>\n

\"\"If you didn\u2019t read Jeff Gilbert\u2019s Friday column rebuking the NCAA\u2019s consideration for expanding their championship basketball tournament from 68 to 72 teams\u2026you should. I highly recommend it.<\/p>\n

I liked it so well that I read it twice, and then a third time. \u2018Gibby,\u2019 as we call him, can write! And with just enough \u2018old school\u2019 to help clear your head when progressive logic is hammering at you that more is better\u2026no matter how bad it is!<\/p>\n

But I couldn\u2019t help but think about things that Jeff couldn\u2019t write, because of space and time \u2013 things that others with life\u2019s wisdoms are probably thinking.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Publisher Sonny Fulks writes OHSAA sports and Ohio State baseball for Press Pros Magazine.com.<\/p>\n

\"\"Here\u2019s one personal reality, pertinent to the tournament at its present size. There\u2019s so many teams now that I can barely remember \u2013 don\u2019t know who\u2019s playing who, and where, or when. I really don\u2019t get interested until the round of 16.\u00a0 If there\u2019s a Butler or Florida Atlantic in it, so much the better.\u00a0 But like the Civil War, change of thinking and new perspectives on it never change the outcome.<\/p>\n

What network is the game on? It\u2019s confusing \u2013 CBS, TNT, TBS?<\/p>\n

And no Billy Packer.\u00a0 Lord, how I miss his ACC bias.<\/p>\n

Actually, by the time the high school state tournament is over I can say that I\u2019m ready for something else.\u00a0 That\u2019s right, and basketball is a sport that I righteously enjoy. But the seasons \u2013 all the seasons \u2013 are so long now\u2026.<\/p>\n

The NBA Finals are in mid-June, and in June I\u2019m watching one thing. Baseball!<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>I can honestly say that I\u2019ve never watched a WNBA game, and the reason is\u2026July is not basketball season. It has nothing to do with women\u2019s basketball. I\u2019m just not into it come July.<\/p>\n

And the reason they play their schedule in the summer is because of competition with the NBA. Even with Caitlin Clark, and even with the rise in popularity for the WNBA, head to head, the WNBA benefits from having the stage to itself.<\/p>\n

I can say the same about football. By the time the Super Bowl is played \u2013 and now the NCAA championship game \u2013 a lot of people are done with football and the constant 24-7 analysis. It\u2019s time to watch basketball, and three months into that season.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t even talk to me about the USFL in the spring? Or even those who entertain themselves by watching it. Compared to the real thing, that\u2019s like comparing frozen pizza to the Keyhole.<\/p>\n

At every level of sport we\u2019ve pushed the envelope now for the sake of inclusion and financial greed to the point of exhaustion and cynicism. Whoever it was that once said that \u201cless is more\u201d knew that half the number of really good players is going to beat twice the number of really average players.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

When this man played\u202610 of the 16 major league franchises finished the season with a winning record.<\/p>\n

Hence, only 16 of the 30 major league baseball teams had a winning record as of July 26 (53.3%). And back in 1960, before the original MLB expansion, 10 of the 16 existing teams finished the season with a winning record (62.5%).<\/p>\n

In the just-finished NBA season, only 14 of the 30 teams in the league finished the season with a winning record (46.6%).\u00a0 And five of the 30 teams had less than 25 wins in an 82-game schedule (29.2%).<\/p>\n

We\u2019ve expanded leagues, and seasons, and playoff opportunities now to the point where we\u2019ve not only watered down the competition, but the logic of those who believe we need seven state champions in high school, and for those with hardly enough athletes to field a team.<\/p>\n

Kudos to Gibby\u2026for calling out National Federation of High School\u2019s CEO Karissa Niehoff, quoting her: \u201cUnlike all other levels of sport in our nation, the No. 1 goal of high school sports is not winning games but helping students learn valuable lessons that prepare them for successful careers and lives.\u201d<\/p>\n

Well, she obviously doesn\u2019t understand that no lesson is more valuable than to learn that employers with the best-paying jobs want to hire\u2026WINNERS?<\/p>\n

Simply put, that\u2019s a terrible, and confusing statement to make when you represent a million high school student-athletes nationwide \u2013 something you want your own kids to understand when they pack their bags and move out of the house and into the real world.<\/p>\n

And if Niehoff\u2019s #1 goal is helping kids learn that getting embarrassed is OK as long as you learn\u2026goal #2 is, \u201cWe\u2019ve got to make more money.\u201d That\u2019s how you\u00a0 \u2018Protect the Purpose\u2019, with overlapping, never-ending competition and six weeks of extended post-season play.\u00a0 You don\u2019t do it if you\u2019re losing money, and the NCAA\u2019s proposal to expand to 72 teams (or more) is just another, more expensive mouthpiece for the same sympathetic narrative over someone being left behind.<\/p>\n

Finally, I know for a fact that NCAA president Charlie Baker never saw the Ohio State men play last winter.\u00a0 If he had he would have come to the same conclusion as 8,000 others, nightly.\u00a0 They weren\u2019t good enough.<\/p>\n

Or even deserving, using the oft-used term when someone like Baker (a former politician, of course) gets that warm \u2018feel-good\u2019 sensation about governing. What teams that come up short deserve are the benefits we all once learned from the school of hard knocks.<\/p>\n

Back when it actually hurt to get beat.<\/p>\n

Back when people were both figuratively, and literally, hungry.<\/p>\n

Back when we didn\u2019t spoon feed them\u2026life\u2019s lessons.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The Precision Strip Company, in Minster and Troy, proudly sponsors the best high school sports coverage on Press Pros.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"If you believe Jeff Gilbert\u2019s conclusion that expanding the NCAA basketball tournament is a bad idea\u2026consider another reality…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42678,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[68],"tags":[402,398,400,401,99],"class_list":{"0":"post-42677","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-ncaa-basketball","8":"tag-basketball","9":"tag-ncaa","10":"tag-ncaa-basketball","11":"tag-ncaabasketball","12":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42677","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42677"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42677\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42678"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42677"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42677"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42677"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}