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They're "Bust"-ing Up Our Party
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Contributing Editor
Courtesy of Bobby Smith
CEO, Sports Reporter
Bobby Smith
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There is a big weekend coming up for all of us under-the-radar opportunity exploiters. It's our last chance to capitalize on someone else's dumb idea. College Basketball's BracketBusters is having its forever finale.
For what it was introduced to do -- Mid-Major schools playing other Mid-Major schools under the guise of helping some of them boost their status in the eyes of the NCAA Selection Committee come March -- BracketBusters never made any sense. The best way to achieve that objective all along would have been to pit Mid-Major schools against power-conference opponents. The whole thing is a joke. Every few years, BracketBusters may have helped one team of 120 involved get into the NCAA Tournament. A format that asks, for instance, Niagara to travel from Buffalo to Coastal Carolina to play a meaningless game - with dozens of similar trips made by no-chance NCAA Tournament schools to play other no-chance NCAA Tournament squads - was straight out of the Moron Club. Whoever came up with this plan to sell television ads to make money for themselves while draining sucker schools of their travel budgets - with the expense passed on to ticket-buyers -- should be put in jail for five years and have basketballs thrown at his kneecaps for 60 minutes a day.
By the way, the true wishes of ESPN and CBS run contrary to what the BracketBusters was always supposed to represent (but never actually did unless you bought into the fake). They don't want an influx of Mid-Major teams making the NCAA Tournament! Average Joe Fan wants as many "name" schools, "football schools," as possible in his NCAA Bracket. You can't bombard Average Joe Fan with Long Beach States, George Masons and Wichita States! He can't handle that!
Why do you think the NCAA Selection Committee constantly pits Mid-Majors against Mid-Majors in the First Round? So one of them is guaranteed to LOSE and get the heck off the TV sets! They can't have a Thursday where Wichita State beats, say, Illinois and George Mason beats, say, Alabama and then they play each other on Sunday. That would never do! Average Joe Fan would say, "Why would I want to sit in front of my TV set and watch George Mason play Wichita State? They don't play football. Duh. Duh. I'm an idiot and what I want, I want."
What Average Joe Fan wants is what ESPN and CBS want. So, it can be argued that the BracketBusters format - which helped perhaps 0.1% of the participants make the NCAA Tournament -- was merely a way for ESPN to make money while it helped to keep the Mid-Majors out of the NCAA Tournament via a BracketBusters format that was a scam and a sham all along. Other than providing national TV exposure for six or eight games on one weekend, BracketBusters didn't do anything that any Mid-Major school couldn't have scheduled on their own if they felt like it.
Look at this quote from VCU's head coach Shaka Smart: "BracketBusters was clearly beneficial to teams like us over the years. It allowed us to play a top-50 or top-100 game and gave us the opportunity to gain an additional high-quality win that may not have otherwise been available." But then again, it may have otherwise been available, right? Smart gave this quote to ESPN.com. Of course. The people who benefited the most from BracketBusters by generating ad revenue.
But ESPN wasn't the only group to benefit financially from BracketBusters. I'm knocking the heck out of it, but for bettors, it was great! Remember, we bet on sports games because we have come to know that the whole system of sports leagues, conferences, and media coverage is a joke. Just tell us when and what time the games are scheduled, let us see the pointspreads and the odds, and we'll take care of things in our own special way. BracketBusters created many more bettable matchups than the naked eye could detect! I love BracketBuster Saturday and will miss the heck out of it forever. I have a special Bracket Buster handicapping process that has never failed me and am knee-deep in it already because the match-ups have been out since January 28 for the games being played on Friday-Saturday, February 22-23. We college basketball bettors are no Average Joe Fan. Average Joe Fan thinks George Mason-Wichita State is bad? What do you think he'd say about North Dakota State vs. Akron? He'd cry if he had to watch that. We college basketball bettors can't wait for it, just like we can't for Evansville vs. Wright State, or South Dakota State at Murray State, or Missouri State at Eastern Michigan. The candy store is being closed down and we've got to get in there one last time! Life will never be as sweet.
Bobby Smith is Editor of Sports Reporter and sportsreporter.com, and author
of "How to Beat the Pro Football Pointspread," currently the nation's #1 best-
selling sports betting book. Check that fact, and order it, at www.amazon.com.
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