Every year during the month of March, basketball fans gear up for the NCAA tournament, held over three weekends. Famous for buzzer-beating game-winning shots and countless other close games, the tournament generates ridiculous amounts of interest and television viewership. This past weekend 49 of the original 65 teams saw their seasons end while 16 still remain.
Coinciding with the opening weekend of the NCAA tournament was the annual CIS final tourney in Halifax. Despite generating a fraction of the media coverage and fan , the CIS tourney should be given its due. The CIS tournament is as a fantastic outlet to see good university basketball played by top-level university athletes. I love NCAA basketball as much as the next person, but I do get a little dejected at the frequency with which scandals are uncovered.
Recently, the University of Georgia released a test given to a class that was taught by the assistant coach of the basketball team to many of its players on the basketball team. The test included questions such as “How many points is a three-point shot worth?” and “How many halves are there in a basketball game?” One of the best parts about tuning into the CIS final tournament is that you know the players participating are going through the same academic rigors as the average student. Another great part of the CIS tournament is the parity between the teams. Instead of having a field of 65 teams there are only 10, making for greater competition between the teams. Take the Carleton Ravens, the eventual champions, for instance. Riding a 47-game win steak dating back to last season, they were expected to roll to a second straight championship. While they did end up winning, their three games were decided by a total of seven points. The fact that a team as dominant as Carleton is taken to the wire in every game illustrates the level of competition. This doesn’t mean there aren’t tons of great games in the NCAA version, but the CIS tourney allows viewers to skip the typically dull early round blowouts that overmatched teams suffer. Lastly, the CIS version is a product of Canada. The teams are comprised mostly of Canadian players who grew up in the Canadian basketball system. The CIS tourney represents the best Canada has to offer. The players participating are not doing so with aspirations of making millions in the NBA, but with hopes of possibly playing professionally somewhere else or even representing Canada at the Olympics.
The NCAA tournament is a wonderful event featuring a myriad of great basketball battles; it’s a shame that it overshadows what is an exciting finale to the Canadian university basketball campaign.
–John Howison
The very essence of basketball is best embodied by the NCAA tournament. Nowhere else does an amateur tournament sweep the hearts and souls of an entire continent. The NCAA tournament offers more of what fans want to see than the CIS can.
The NCAA tournament is the culmination of most participants’ careers. It may be true that the CIS tournament is the culmination of the Canadian basketball season, but let’s be frank—which tournament is played at a higher calibre? In fact, ask any CIS player if he could trade his experiences playing in Canada for a shot at being part of the NCAA tournament, and I wouldn’t be surprised if the majority of respondents would move south in a heartbeat.
Let’s talk exposure. It just makes sense that the more exposure a tournament gets, the more of a following it will have. You could count the number of televised CIS basketball games on one hand—three fingers, to be specific—whereas the NCAA tournament occupies several channels over the span of nearly a month. The NCAA tournament delivers the ratings to make it attractive programming, something the CIS fails to do. If one tries to argue that the NCAA tournament is buoyed by its appeal to Americans rather than Canadians, they are committing a grievous fallacy. Canada’s own Sportsnet offered more than 40 hours of NCAA programming over last weekend and viewers should expect more of the same this weekend. Simply put, exposure breeds and the NCAA tournament is the foremost example of this principle.
Don’t get me wrong, players in the CIS are talented athletes and tremendous basketball players at that, but they are not in the same league as the NCAA’s finely tuned basketball specialists. It is pretty hard, nay impossible, to name a CIS basketball player who made the leap to the NBA. Quite obviously, the same cannot be said of the NCAA. It is no surprise that fans love watching talent, and elite talent is on full display in the NCAA. Lost in the shuffle is the sheer volume of the NCAA tournament. With 65 teams vying for the title, there is nary a dull moment, as each day of tournament play is rife with fan-pleasets. With the volume of schools, alumni and hometown ers are more likely to find their team in the tournament. There are certain similarities when juxtaposing the NCAA and the CIS. Both offer dedicated players, competing to the best of their abilities, however, the abilities of competitors in the NCAA tournament are somewhat higher than those of CIS athletes. From one highflying alley-oop that sends the crowd into hysterics to a key three-pointer that leads to an upset, the NCAA has it all.
–Sam Broadbent
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