Latest news with #March
USA Today
9 hours ago
- Politics
- USA Today
College sports leaders have no good reasons to expand CFP, March Madness
College sports leaders have no good reasons to expand CFP, March Madness SEC and Big Ten leaders, plus many others, are waging war against problems that don't really exist; struggling for the sake of struggle. Show Caption Hide Caption How coaches salaries and the NIL bill affects college football Dan Wolken breaks down the annual college football coaches compensation package to discuss salaries and how the NIL bill affects them. Sports Pulse The more we've heard this week from the leaders of college athletics about their urgent need to expand the College Football Playoff and the NCAA men's basketball tournament, the less clear it becomes why they're expanding in the first place. It would be one thing if there was an obvious business case why it's necessary for March Madness to go from 68 to 72 or 74 teams, as NCAA president Charlie Baker suggested could be imminent Thursday in comments at the Big 12's spring meetings. The same goes for the CFP, whose format was a major talking point every day at the SEC's meetings, with a looming decision about whether to expand from 12 to 16. But after months of debate on both fronts, what's become clear is that expansion is going to happen for no reason other than a vapid sense of inertia sprung from the bruised egos of sports executives – who subconsciously understand their own fundamental weakness and ineffectiveness are to blame for the spiral of chaos that college sports can't seem to escape. At least when they push a button to expand a postseason, it feels like they're doing something. That's an explanation. It's not a reason. When the NFL expanded its playoffs from 12 to 14 in 2020, changing its format for the first time in three decades, the obvious factor was an influx of money: Hundreds of millions of dollars, in fact, half of which gets split with players. When the NBA shook up its postseason and created the play-in tournament, the primary motivation was to keep more teams competitive late in the season and discourage tanking. Those are sensible reasons everyone can understand. But neither Baker nor one of the prominent conference commissioners like the SEC's Greg Sankey or the Big Ten's Tony Petitti have been able to articulate a clear and concise mission statement for what expansion of either tournament is supposed to accomplish. They just want to do it. Here's how thin the rationale is regarding March Madness: Speaking with reporters in Orlando, Baker cited the committee snubbing Missouri Valley Conference regular-season champion Indiana State in 2024 despite a 32-7 record, suggesting an expansion would get the NCAA tournament closer to including the "best" 68 teams. Of course, the NCAA tournament has always worked this way. Excellent mid-major teams that lose in their conference tournament often don't get in. And as the track record of the tournament clearly shows, the vast majority of bids in an expanded field would go to power conference teams with questionable records. The push to expand March Madness precedes Baker's tenure, which began in March 2023. In fact, you can trace the momentum back to March of 2022 when Texas A&M was left out despite a late-season surge to the championship game of the SEC tournament, converting Sankey into a public proponent of expansion. But the idea that tournament spots are being filled by automatic qualifiers from mid-major conferences with less chance to do damage in the tournament than Texas A&M's 2022 team, for instance, isn't new. It's part of the deal, and there's no real demand to move the cut line other than from those who are inconvenienced by it. In fact, one of the big obstacles to March Madness expansion – and the reason it didn't happen years ago – is that there's not a huge pot of television money out there for a few more games between mediocre basketball teams on Tuesday and Wednesday of tournament week. Not only is expansion unlikely to boost profits in a significant way, it's an open question whether the NCAA can expand the tournament without diluting the shares of its revenue distribution model, which are worth about $2 million per team per round. A similar dynamic is at play in the CFP debate. 12-team CFP worked; trashing it makes no sense There were clear incentives for the conference commissioners when they first floated expanding the football tournament from four to 12 teams back in 2021. Not only had TV ratings leveled off, perhaps due to many of the same programs populating the field year after year, but going to 12 would both guarantee access for all the power conference champions and set the table for a $1.3 billion per year contract with ABC/ESPN beginning in 2026 – nearly triple the original 12-year deal that established the CFP. But that's where things get murky. Even before the first 12-team playoff last year, conference commissioners were *already* batting around a 14-team model for 2026. That has now morphed into a likely 16-team bracket. The financial terms of the TV deal, however, will not change in a significant way, whether they land at 12, 14 or 16. So why do it? Not because it's a great business proposition – in fact, there's a legitimate concern about playoff oversaturation and potential second-order effects – but because the more you expand access, the more access everyone wants. That's what we have seen over the last week, especially from the SEC meetings as Sankey and others in the league launched a breathtaking, shameless propaganda effort attempting to rewrite recent history. Getting a mere three teams into last year's 12-team playoff while the Big Ten won its second straight title seems to have done a psychological number on those folks. Rather than admit the truth – the SEC didn't have an amazing year in 2024 and the playing field nationally has been leveled to some extent by NIL and the transfer portal – they are arguing to shape the next CFP format based on a level of conference strength that certainly existed in the past but hasn't in the NIL/transfer portal era. One prominent athletics director, Florida's Scott Stricklin, questioned whether the football bracket should be chosen by committee. Another unnamed administrator went so far as to muse that the SEC and Big Ten should think about just holding their own playoff, according to Yahoo! Sports. If you take a step back and look at what's happening from a 30,000-foot view, it smacks of famed political scientist Francis Fukuyama's 'The End of History,' where he writes about how the triumph of Western liberalism and consumerism has unwittingly created this kind of regressive condition that shows up in so many facets of life and culture. 'If men cannot struggle on behalf of a just cause because that just cause was victorious in an earlier generation,' he wrote, 'then they will struggle against the just cause. They will struggle for the sake of struggle. They will struggle, in other words, out of a certain boredom: for they cannot imagine living in a world without struggle.' That kind of feels like what's going on here. Aside from a small adjustment in how it was seeded, nothing about the 12-team playoff seemed problematic. If anything, it was widely praised for delivering what the original expansion proponents wanted: Geographic diversity, representation for the four power conferences and the Group of Five, first-round playoff games in college venues and a lot of interesting games from the quarterfinals on. In other words, it worked. And there is no obvious reason – financial or otherwise – to have chucked it in the trash already while the four power conferences launch a war amongst themselves about how much access gets allocated to each conference, and by whom. The angst is especially confusing from the SEC, which just got a record 14 bids to the men's basketball tournament (including national champion Florida), has eight of the 16 national seeds for the baseball tournament and five of the eight teams in the Women's College World Series. They're doing just fine, and there is a long track record of being justly rewarded when their teams perform at the highest level. There's little doubt that will happen again in football regardless of which playoff system gets implemented. It just didn't happen last year because the SEC, for once, did not deserve it. But the Big Ten and the SEC are, as Fukuyama wrote, struggling for the sake of struggle. The more power they have amassed by reshaping the landscape through realignment, the more they claim the system is broken. Some believe their end game is a separation from the NCAA, creating a world where they don't have to share a business partnership with conferences and schools they believe aren't bringing as much value to the table. The reality, though, is that any such move would draw a level of scrutiny – legal and political – they are not currently prepared to handle, not to mention the arduous work of building out the infrastructure for all kinds of unglamorous stuff the NCAA already provides. So instead, they wage war against problems that don't really exist, reach for solutions that create actual problems and then fail to solve the problems right in front of their face. The push to expand the NCAA tournament and the CFP are merely symptoms of an affluenza swallowing the highest levels of college sports. Knowing they've failed miserably to execute on the important issues they truly need to solve to ensure the long-term health of their business, the likes of Sankey and Petitti and many others have elevated tedium to a crisis. So a crisis is what they shall have.
Yahoo
13 hours ago
- General
- Yahoo
European glory has Catley hungry for Matildas success
Securing silverware with Arsenal has made Matildas captain Steph Catley all the more 'hungry' to add to her trophy collection at next year's AFC Women's Asian Cup. Catley and Arsenal's other two Matildas, Caitlin Foord and Kyra Cooney-Cross, are still on cloud nine after winning the UEFA Women's Champions League with a 1-0 victory over Barcelona in last weekend's final in Lisbon. 'It's been a big few days, biggest of my life, my career, I would say,' Catley said. 'It's something I've dreamed of my entire career. It's the pinnacle of football and being able to do it alongside my two Aussies, and just being part of Arsenal and being that club in England to do it again, it's very, very special.' Just as special would be the Matildas being able to win a major trophy for the first time since 2010 at next year's Women's Asian Cup, which starts in Australia in March. 'To actually do it (win the Champions League), just makes me think about my career and think about the things that I really want to achieve, and winning silverware with the Matildas has always been top of my list,' Catley said. '(It) definitely makes me hungry. I've got the taste of trophies, and that would mean a lot to me if we were able to (win the Asian Cup). 'It's coming very close, but I think it's good for at least the three of us to have a taste of (winning a trophy), and to be able to lead that success and that hunt for success for our (national) team, that'd be very nice. 'Maybe it hasn't been the most successful few years, but set we still believe we can achieve something special.' After only arriving in Matildas camp on Wednesday night, Catley, Foord and Cooney-Cross were unused substitutes in Australia's 2-0 win over Argentina at Marvel Stadium on Friday night. However, it's likely all three will start when the Matildas again face the Argentines in Canberra on Monday night. And that suits Catley, who said she could get 'antsy' watching from the sidelines. 'It'd be nice to get back on the field again. I'm not a very good sub. I don't like sitting on the bench,' she said. 'I feel good. We have had a big couple of days, and it's obviously a long way to travel, and we only travelled a few days ago, but I'll be ready, and the girls will be ready. 'It's the end of the season, so it's not like we're unfit or not ready to play. We're definitely ready to play.'
News.com.au
14 hours ago
- General
- News.com.au
Steph Catley keen to add Asian Cup trophy to her Champions League silverware with Arsenal
Securing silverware with Arsenal has made Matildas captain Steph Catley all the more 'hungry' to add to her trophy collection at next year's AFC Women's Asian Cup. Catley and Arsenal's other two Matildas, Caitlin Foord and Kyra Cooney-Cross, are still on cloud nine after winning the UEFA Women's Champions League with a 1-0 victory over Barcelona in last weekend's final in Lisbon. 'It's been a big few days, biggest of my life, my career, I would say,' Catley said. 'It's something I've dreamed of my entire career. It's the pinnacle of football and being able to do it alongside my two Aussies, and just being part of Arsenal and being that club in England to do it again, it's very, very special.' Just as special would be the Matildas being able to win a major trophy for the first time since 2010 at next year's Women's Asian Cup, which starts in Australia in March. 'To actually do it (win the Champions League), just makes me think about my career and think about the things that I really want to achieve, and winning silverware with the Matildas has always been top of my list,' Catley said. '(It) definitely makes me hungry. I've got the taste of trophies, and that would mean a lot to me if we were able to (win the Asian Cup). 'It's coming very close, but I think it's good for at least the three of us to have a taste of (winning a trophy), and to be able to lead that success and that hunt for success for our (national) team, that'd be very nice. 'Maybe it hasn't been the most successful few years, but set we still believe we can achieve something special.' After only arriving in Matildas camp on Wednesday night, Catley, Foord and Cooney-Cross were unused substitutes in Australia's 2-0 win over Argentina at Marvel Stadium on Friday night. However, it's likely all three will start when the Matildas again face the Argentines in Canberra on Monday night. And that suits Catley, who said she could get 'antsy' watching from the sidelines. 'It'd be nice to get back on the field again. I'm not a very good sub. I don't like sitting on the bench,' she said. 'I feel good. We have had a big couple of days, and it's obviously a long way to travel, and we only travelled a few days ago, but I'll be ready, and the girls will be ready. 'It's the end of the season, so it's not like we're unfit or not ready to play. We're definitely ready to play.'
Bloomberg
a day ago
- Business
- Bloomberg
India's Economy Expands Faster-Than-Expected 7.4% Last Quarter
India's economy grew in line with government expectations for the fiscal year ending March, reinforcing its position as the next major global growth engine amid escalating trade tensions. Gross domestic product rose 7.4% in the three months to March from a year earlier, the Statistics Ministry said Friday, above the 6.8% forecast by economists in a Bloomberg survey. For the fiscal year ended March, the economy expanded 6.5%.
Hans India
a day ago
- Politics
- Hans India
WBSSC job case: ‘Untainted' teachers to continue protests despite fresh recruitment notification
Kolkata: Despite the West Bengal School Service Commission (WBSSC) issuing notifications on Friday morning for fresh recruitment of teachers for secondary and higher secondary schools, hundreds of 'untainted' or 'genuine' teachers -- whose appointments were cancelled by the Supreme Court last month -- have vowed to continue their protests. These teachers, though declared "untainted" by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), have found themselves in limbo after the Supreme Court annulled the entire panel of 25,753 teaching and non-teaching appointments. The court took the step after the state government failed to publish a segregated list distinguishing 'untainted' appointees from those who allegedly secured jobs through corrupt means. This failure to act, the protesting teachers say, has cost them their livelihoods and dignity. 'The core of our protest is this -- why should genuine teachers like us, who have served with integrity for years and have been cleared by the CBI, be forced to sit for the examination again? And why did the government not publish the segregated list in time?' said a representative of Jogyo Shikshak-Shikshika Adhikar Mancha (Genuine Teachers' Rights Forum), the umbrella body leading the movement. The forum argues that the government's reluctance to publish the list points to an attempt to shield the 'tainted' rather than protect those who are innocent. 'This delay proves the government is more interested in protecting those who paid for jobs than in safeguarding the rights of genuine teachers like us. We've been left with no choice but to continue our protest,' the representative said. As part of their ongoing agitation, the forum will organize a 'March to the State Secretariat' rally on Friday. Protesters plan to keep parts of their bodies bare as a symbolic act to reflect the vulnerability and humiliation they feel. 'Our jobs and dignity have been stripped from us. So as a mark of symbolic protest, we will bare parts of our bodies during the rally to reflect that reality,' said Chinmay Mondal, convenor of the forum. The teachers have been protesting on the streets for weeks, demanding reinstatement or at least exemption from the fresh recruitment process, citing their clean records and years of service.
