Only minutes after hoisting the Big Ten championship trophy March 13, the winners likely will gather around the television to watch the CBS Selection Show.
But they shouldn’t expect the game’s result to have an effect on their NCAA Tournament seeding, said Bob Bowlsby, University of Iowa athletics director and NCAA Tournament committee chairman.
“We just are not able to do a very capable job of taking those kind of things into consideration when the games get over so late,” Bowlsby said on last year’s 6 p.m. EST Selection Show.
Some coaches said they aren’t too pleased with the timings.
“It’s unfortunate it couldn’t be a little bit earlier and the selection show a little bit later,” Iowa’s Steve Alford said.
Wisconsin’s Bo Ryan, whose team was on the receiving end of a controversial seeding last year, also said he isn’t impressed. But despite these seedings, most coaches said they are OK with the 3:30 p.m. starting time.
“We may get caught in a situation or two,” Minnesota coach Dan Monson said. “But overall, for the betterment of our league, I think as coaches we would certainly prefer to have the nationally televised exposure for our championship game.”
There only have been one or two sticky situations since CBS began using a late-afternoon time slot to broadcast Big Ten games in 1991, Big Ten Associate Commissioner Mark Rudner said.
That includes last year, when then-No. 10 Wisconsin (24-6), received a No. 6 seed after winning the championship game 70-53 against Illinois, which earned a No. 5 seed in the tournament. Wisconsin played its opening-round games in Milwaukee but was grouped with Pittsburgh, which at 29-4 arguably was the strongest No. 3 seed in the field.
Meanwhile, No. 21 Maryland (19-11) won the 1 p.m. Atlantic Coast Conference title game in overtime against Duke, 95-87. The Terrapins, considered by some a bubble team before the ACC Tournament, received a No. 4 seed.
Still, even Ryan said he saw positives in the game’s timing.
“A lot of people (were) watching that game, I found out, (due to) the fact that it was on right before selection time,” Ryan said. “There were people that I hadn’t seen in 40 years who came out of the woodwork to say: ‘Hey, we saw your game. We didn’t know what you were doing but found out you’re coaching at Wisconsin.'”
The Big Ten’s contract with CBS runs through 2010, with an option to extend it through 2013. Rudner would not disclose the contract’s value but said the league shares the revenue evenly among its 11 teams. Rudner also said the league had no plans to attempt to change the timing of the game.
“We like the idea of having the Big Ten Tournament championship game buttressed up against (the) NCAA Selection Show,” he said.
So in the foreseeable future, the champion may have to take a seedings hit in order to benefit the rest of league.
That is, unless the winner already is a top-seed lock, like No. 1 Illinois (28-0) this year.
“Hopefully our league is strong enough,” Monson said, “that the league itself is going to command the respect of the committee, regardless of that game.”
Reach Patrick Dorsey at [email protected].
