CHRISTOPHER JAMES JOLLAY
Hall of Famer
IMO, The reality is the playing field is being controlled in favor of the P5 programs that have big tv deals. They dont wanna have bottom feeders in their conferences. They want them all in the dance and getting all the money that comes with it.
This is a travesty. Mason, the trailblazing program that opened the path for mid majors should be again trailblazing the defense of college basketball before the greedy f*cks in the acc, sec etc run a monopoly and further ruin the college game. Before the current tv situation, only some were on TV. Now everybody is on tv. However, the real tv is the network prime time slots and espn/fox....the crumbs fall to NBC, espn+.
While, yes, the big conference schools have gotten far smarter about poaching talent since 2006, and the transfer rules have/could make it worse, people can also point out three of the top six AP teams to "finish" the year were not from the big conferences...
Which is pretty impressive, really.