I Will Never Stop Writing This Blog: College Basketball's Dumbest Decision Was The Moment They Stopped Giving Us The 24-Hour Opening Day Marathon
I saw this tweet from Norlander and immediately thought of the blog I write basically every year on Opening Day. No, not a Kentucky blog, but rather the 24-hour marathon. We need it back in our lives. Why? Because there's NOTHING better than 24-hours of college basketball. It made opening day unique, it gave us something to look forward to, it made college basketball, college basketball. You're telling me you didn't tune in to a Manhattan/Fairfield game at 9am? I call you a liar.
The best game of the day today is Gonzaga/Baylor happening at 11:30 because they don't want to go up against Monday Night Football. Fine. I actually like that it's late. A little March prep on the first day of the season, no waiting to get into that 2:30am night and seeing if a team shits down its pants when a press happens. You may be wondering what happened to the 24-hour Marathon that we all beg for?
Well, in 2017 they decided to stop doing it because of all these other events we get. All the MTE's, all the little tournaments and said it didn't make sense from a logistical standpoint. You know what? I don't care. I'm selfish. I want games on at 6am. It's the dumbest decision the sport made - even more so than conference realignment. That's how strongly I feel about it. It's a decent day for it too. But look at the schedule, there's 3 Division I vs Division I teams before 5pm:
Charleston vs Southern Illinois - Noon
Santa Clara vs St. Louis - 3pm
Denver at Stanford - 4pm.
Then we cram everything in after that. Two good games late, Ohio State/Texas at 10 and Gonzaga/Baylor. It's a Monday where people are talking about how bad NFL teams are. Give us more games. Give us something to watch, something to distract us from Daniel Jones still being the Giants quarterback. It's no secret that college basketball tries to find ways to draw attention to its regular season. It's also no secret that people think the college basketball regular season is pointless. At least with something unique you'll have people talking about it.
PS: Bring back BracketBusters too while we're at it. Put me in charge and we'll have the sport the way it should be. The way it was when we were growing up.