Geography's diminished role in college basketball
[Part 3 of 3] Money has usurped geography as the sport's organizing force
The tidiness of the NCAA tournament bracket – with its seedings and matchups and nice, straight lines – hides the underlying chaos of upsets, jubilee and tears. The bracket deceives in other ways, as well, creating clashes between regions, conferences and playing styles that imply geography is a dominant force in college basketball.
With money usurping geography as college athletics’ organizing force, historical rivalries, recruiting and conference membership are no longer bound by state or regional lines.
“It’s a national game,” said Jim Calhoun, a Hall of Fame coach and three-time national champion at the University of Connecticut. “It’s not just one big league, but it feels like it.”
Recruits travel farther from home. Conference realignment frays familiar rivalries. Name-image-likeness and transfer rules fuel further uncertainty in the game. All these changes mean the regional heuristics we apply to the game – a player’s skillset informed by his hometown, a conference’s penchant for physicality – are breaking down.
Regional Styles
When Calhoun first arrived at UConn in 1986, he had to recruit nationally because he couldn’t compete with the incumbent powers in Big East recruiting. He relied on personal relationships and regional heuristics in recruiting.
“New York City was the place to go get point guards because of the style of play, and the outdoor games are legendary,” Calhoun said.
Even decades after Calhoun’s arrival in the Big East, the conference’s trademark physicality imprinted on people’s minds.
“I know that in my day, stylistically, the Big East wouldn’t have been my vibe,” said Kendall Williams, who played at the University of New Mexico and was the 2013 Mountain West Conference Player of the Year. “Dealing with Kemba Walker, my physicality wasn’t ready at that point. I needed more tempo, more agility, more space.”
However true the regional tropes – the tough NYC point guard, the skilled Midwestern big man, the athletic West Coast wing – were in the past, they’re less true now as playing styles have converged.
“If we went to a gym in Chicago or New York City or Philly, the big men would be practicing threes,” said Calhoun. “They all shoot bad threes in my opinion.”
A sweet shooting big man doesn’t fit the Big East mold exemplified by Patrick Ewing or Alonzo Mourning.
“It’s all jumbled around,” Williams said.
Realignment and Rivalries
Historically, conferences were geographically organized and aptly named – the Atlantic Coast, the Big East, the Pacific 10, the Missouri Valley. Conference realignment resulted in comical misnomers, like 10 (now 16) teams in the Big 12 and the Big East including members in Nebraska and Indiana. It has also frayed the histories that stitch together conference rivalries
“[Realignment] takes away from the real heat because you don’t have the cross-town rivalries, teams that are familiar with each other,” Williams said.
Kansas-Missouri and Duke-Maryland are just a few casualties of schools changing conferences. Although Kansas-Missouri renewed the Border War after nearly 10 years, the lack of continuity takes away from the intensity, said Phil Pressey, a guard on Missouri during the epic installment in 2012.
“The game is unmatched, in my opinion,” Pressey said. “I had the upperclassmen telling me the game was crazy, it’s a game you’ll remember for the rest of your life. [The players now] didn’t really have that.”
Players aren’t the only ones who miss out on rivalries. Scott McFarland, a Kansas State fan and co-host of the Boscoe’s Boys podcast covering Wildcat sports, would lament seeing the Kansas-Kansas State rivalry end.
“Folks don’t like the word hate,” McFarland said, “but the fact that for 40 minutes it’s acceptable to hate your next door neighbor, your uncle – if that was gone, I’d be devastated.”
Calhoun noted that the increase in transfers detracts from the familiarity.
“What’s the toughest fight you have? With your brothers. Some teams are operating with eight transfers. It’s hard to create a rivalry when the dudes weren’t there before.”
Fluctuating rosters can lessen the fan experience, said Wes Durham, an announcer for ESPN and the ACC Network.
“The biggest concern is having a generation of fans that don’t have that acquired fanship and loyalty,” he said. “Are the rosters so volatile year after year that you don’t lock in to Marcus Paige or Kennedy Meeks because they’re in and they’re gone?”
Two recent changes – relaxed transfer rules and name-image-likeness rules – are so recent that no one can be sure how they’ll continue to alter the game.
“Those two things [transfers and NIL], in my opinion, we’ve ignited, but do we really know how to control them?” asked Durham. “It’s a really fair question.”
March Madness
For all the changes and uncertainty in the college game, the geography of the sport’s biggest stage hasn’t changed as much. The tournament selects a cross section of teams every year, pulling at least one representative from each conference spread across the country. Not surprisingly, the geographic center of NCAA tournament teams since 1985 (when the tournament expanded to 64 teams) clusters within the same area as the geographic center of all 360+ teams.
But geography is only one of myriad factors adding to the madness of March basketball. (Explore interactive NCAA tournament maps in Parts 1 and 2 of the series.)
“There’s so many emotions and distractions and pressures, it really tests a team’s camaraderie and will,” said Williams, who played in three NCAA tournaments. “It’s a gauntlet.”
But once the game starts, all the distractions recede and the usual determinants separating winners from losers arise. William’s 2012 New Mexico team was a three seed but was upset by Harvard in the first round.
“It’s just matchups anyways,” Williams said. “They were a tough matchup for us. They went four guards out.”
The Business and Human Sides of Sports
Recent changes seem to have shifted greater importance – or at least greater salience, if it’s always existed – to schools, coaches, players and conferences optimizing for current and future earning potential.
“You don’t have to be a mathematician,” Calhoun said. “Players are making $8 million a year coming off the bench in the NBA. Kids aspire to that.”
Yet with hindsight, the emotional ties can still prove as powerful as the allure of money. While forces expand the typical geographic boundaries of college basketball, there will always remain a local dimension grounded in personal relationships.
“I’m glad and blessed, at 30 [years old], post-college, to have a different perspective,” Williams said. Williams grew up outside of LA and was originally committed to UCLA. The pressure and emotional baggage of committing to the local blue blood left a chip on his shoulder when the commitment fell through. In New Mexico, he found a welcoming community that he still values.
“That community carried me through college,” he said. “Albuquerque is a huge crux of the relationships that I have there.”
Pressey, who played overseas and is currently an assistant coach for the Celtics, also prioritizes the relationships fostered by basketball. “That’s the beauty of basketball, the game is bigger than the sport because it brings people together,” Pressey said. “That’s why I want to coach, to help kids understand how far the game can take you. You think about just making a lot of money, but no, I’ve built friendships and relationships that are going to last a lifetime.”
For others, the locality hardly extends beyond the family dinner table. Durham – whose father was legendary Tar Heels announcer Woody Durham – also said his most meaningful memories of college basketball center on the familial ties of calling games with his father.
“I’ve called Final Fours. I’ve called a Super Bowl,” Durham said. “Calling the ACC Tournament with my father is my favorite event, period. Being a part of the broadcast with my father is singular for me.”
And for fans, the love of the game can defy logic.
“Logically, being so emotionally invested into kids playing a sport, you shouldn’t,” McFarland said. “Fan is short for fanatics, it is a mental illness, it is a game. But the thing is, for so many of us, it’s the memories that are connected to it. The connection through family, through friends. If you’re an alum, they’re representing you.”
While geography’s gravitational pull on college sports has weakened and other competing forces – money, realignment, NIL – replace it, much of the magic of why we love sports remains. But as these nascent trends take shape and settle in, we’ll discover if the frayed rivalries and cross-country conference games will strain that magic, too.
NCAA tournament maps
Read my other posts [1, 2] that included interactive maps exploring the geography of every NCAA tournament team from this year’s bracket and every year 1985-2023.
P.S.: All of the interviews were conducted in 2022. After failing to have the piece published by bigger outlets, it’s sat on my shelf the past few years, so I’ve dusted it off as past of my three-part series on NCAA tournament geography.