Players Era

Then we shouldn’t have went to it if we didn’t like the format. There’s no excuses…. TJ basically turned down the opportunity for us to make more money…. it’s on him.
Cmon man, I agree with alot of your takes, but this isn't it. Give me a coach like TJ everytime over aome coach who would rather embarrass his mentor for some sleazy Vegas money.
 
And if Milan got the green light but missed they'd ***** about that and be screaming about how these are paid athletes so they should make the money ball like it's automatic and maybe it's time for him to transfer if he's not going to help boost fans' fee fees.

It's funny how this situation replaced the meltdowns about players playing for two more minutes but here we are.
We beat them by 18. Would 2 more have made a difference? Who knows. Would we have won the next game? Who knows. I'm not sure about the format. It wouldn't be realistic to use regular brackets for a 16-team tournament since that would be 5 games in a row. Maybe they should put more weight on AP rankings If every team does get a million appearance money, that's spreading the wealth pretty well. I think it's a great showcase fore college basketball and the Cyclones looked awesome. I'm not going to complain.
 
I’m in Vegas and we’ve had a blast. Been here many times before. We’ve watched basketball, went to the sphere to see Wizard of Oz (Amazing!), saw Tapeface on Monday (also very good), went to a Bob Marley deal yesterday, met some wonderful people, wives went to the pool for an afternoon, ate well…it’s all been a great trip. Today we do Thanksgiving at a friends place.
Sounds like a good chunk of money. You can have fun lots of places with enough money.
 
I've realized college sports are going down the ********, but getting to the point where people are complaining that TJ didn't coach a player to take a shot to push an 18 point lead to 20 in the final seconds is a pretty telling sign of just how bad it has gotten.
It could be worse.

Instead of point differential as the 2nd criteria, the Tournament Organizers could have used point spreads set by MGM's Sports Book. Would have been a good sponsorship opportunity!!;):cool:
 
Sounds like a good chunk of money. You can have fun lots of places with enough money.
Anything you do costs money. Worst thing about Vegas is food these days. Entertainment is no different than Iowa. Going to the Marley show was about the same as going to a movie in Des Moines.
 
Probably suggested somewhere by someone: Why not reduce the 1st-thru-4 payout slightly and give some of that (even equally) to the 5-thru-8? So if you do miss the cutoff due to a narrow difference in point spread, you get some reward for being top half (for a 16/18 team, obviously something will change when it's 32-team field).

I guess that could bring complaints from the 9th/10th place teams, but at that level nobody has won enough games anyway to validate.
 
Spreading the money around a little bit more seems like a logical salve. None of the teams are in peak form yet. Obviously do not want to disincentivize winning the event (under whatever whacky terms are used), and the idea of $1 million to winner is great marketing. But a better distribution model could be implemented for 3rd place downward. It might even encourage better competition in all the matchups.
 
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We beat them by 18. Would 2 more have made a difference? Who knows. Would we have won the next game? Who knows. I'm not sure about the format. It wouldn't be realistic to use regular brackets for a 16-team tournament since that would be 5 games in a row. Maybe they should put more weight on AP rankings If every team does get a million appearance money, that's spreading the wealth pretty well. I think it's a great showcase fore college basketball and the Cyclones looked awesome. I'm not going to complain.

Yeah loved the results, just kind of a weird thing to practically penalize a team for winning.

Like what if ISU gets it to 20 and then Creighton heaves a full court shot and hits it at the buzzer?

I'm guessing TJ kept ISU's guys in there to see if they could score one more before like the 20 second mark or something and then decided not to be cheap with 5 seconds left (ISU's last possession).
 
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I am all for what TJ is doing culturally and the results are playing out on the court. In the grand scheme, this is a really small thing ti critique a great coach and leader over.

At the same time, they preach preparation and accountability. This left a game against Tennessee (rather than a bad Syracuse team) in a prime time TV slot and 500k on the table. For a program like ours, that’s a large amount of money. Probably the difference between a star player and a sixth man for us next year.

I also think it’s really weird to have your starters in with game fully out of reach for several minutes at that point but then tell them not to shoot. Those two things seem to be in conflict with each other.
You guys are so full of it. We won our first by 1 and the other teams played after. If we scored 2 more they would have just scored more as well.
 
You guys are so full of it. We won our first by 1 and the other teams played after. If we scored 2 more they would have just scored more as well.
That’s entirely possible but why not try and max out the margin?
 
That’s entirely possible but why not try and max out the margin?

So just beat St. John's by more? That's all? That was a tough, tough game where any sort of win was fantastic.

And if Creighton scores on their last possession ISU can't win by 20 so that stays moot too.
 
When the competition isn't even for every team, the winning point margin becomes a ******** measurement. Nothing about this event was supposed to be "fair". It's a TV product that aims to deliver the best matchups for the brands sponsoring the tournament.
 
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When the competition isn't even for every team, the winning point margin becomes a ******** measurement. Nothing about this event was supposed to be "fair". It's a TV product that aims to deliver the best matchups for the brands sponsoring the tournament.
Exactly, they just took a page from the College Football Playoff and ran with it.
 
Point differential is VERY common in youth sports. 11u soccer teams are always pushing it to 4 in tournaments. This is tournament sports at basically every level.
As I said before, there is a huge difference in a 11u soccer tourney and a NCAA D1 College BB tourney with $1millions on the line.

The idea that because this works for a 11u soccer game where 5 points is a lot of scoring, where kids are just learning the sport, so it must works for all sports at all levels, and in a game where there are 100+ points scored and a point differential means the difference in getting nothing or millions of dollars is absolutely Ridiculous.
 
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As I said before, there is a huge difference in a 11u soccer tourney and a NCAA D1 College BB tourney with $1millions on the line.

The idea that because this works for a 11u soccer game where 5 points is a lot of scoring, where kids are just learning the sport, so it must works for all sports at all levels, and in a game where there are 100+ points scored and a point differential means the difference in getting nothing or millions of dollars is absolutely Ridiculous.

They do it in basketball too.

The point wasn’t that it’s a good thing, only that point differential being some tiebreaker is not the harbinger of the demise of the NCAA. It’s how sports are done for the first 10 years of these guys’ lives.
 
So since this event has signed on with big 12 top 8 teams and Arizona has decided to go to Maui in 2026, does it extend to 9th place? (Assuming Zona is a top half team this season)