If I Were in Charge of.....College Basketball

This is part two of a series of posts on if I was the Director of the Department of Sports and what all I would do if I was in charge.  Last time was about the NBA, this time it's college basketball.  Last week was the end to another run of March Madness and partly from that run came the idea for this series.  This entry will tie in well to last one as there will be some ideas that will be helpful in both arenas.  So, if I were in charge of college basketball...

*No more one and done athletes.  Like I mentioned with the NBA post, if a high schooler wants to jump straight to the pros fine but if he signs with a university he stays a minimum of three years and puts himself on track to graduate if he leaves early.   Give a real emphasis to "student athlete" and not just "barely a student just so they're able to play one year and then leave".

*Scholarships are a 4 year commitment not a 1 year commitment renewed 4 times.  I will probably use this instance as well when I talk about college football but the argument is good here as well.  If a university is signing a student to a scholarship it should be for the length of the time that the student will be there.  That student can be assured that their scholarship won't be yanked away and given to somebody else on a whim.

*With regard to automatic bids, power conferences can give them to regular season champs, mid-majors to tourney champs.  Power conferences can still have tourney champions and get some bonus (better seeding in NCAA tourney) if they win but don't have to worry about a regular season power conference champion being an at-large bid in the NCAA tourney.  For the mid-majors, their conference tournaments can be highlighted because of keeping the tourney champ as the automatic bids.

*Have the automatic qualifiers ranked as the higher seeds (1-8) and at large bids as the lower seeds (9-16).  This is probably the most out there one but I think it make things interesting.  It would assure mid majors that are really good that they will not be ranked no lower than an 8 seed and at large teams that were so so would be ranked no higher than a 9 seed. On top of that, the last 8 at large teams would be the ones playing in the "First Four".  Automatic qualifiers from mid major schools shouldn't be the majority in the "First Four".  It should be teams that were on the bubble that should be playing in Dayton.  Make them earn their way into the tourney.

*Gus Johnson should call March Madness games again.  This year, Gus wasn't calling games because he doesn't work for CBS.  There should be a contract that allows him to work March Madness games.  I know that Jay Bilas for a time worked March Madness games while working also at ESPN.  They could do the same for Gus.  March Madness isn't the same without Gus.  That should be fixed.

That is part two of "If I Were in Charge of".  Feel free to go back and check out other posts in this series and leave a comment on how you would change things if you were "in charge".