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College Basketball History
The game of basketball was
devised by
James Naismith in
1892. The
first recorded game involving a college basketball team took place in
Beaver Falls, Pennsylvania on
April 8,
1893 when a
team from
Geneva College defeated the
New Brighton
YMCA
[1] [2].
The first intercollegiate game was played on
February 9,
1895 when
Minnesota State School of Agriculture defeated
Hamline College by a score of 9 to 3. The first intercollegiate game
involving the now familiar five-player format occurred in
Iowa City, Iowa on
January 18,
1896 when the
University of Chicago defeated the
University of Iowa 15 to 12. Before that time, there were usually
seven to nine players on each team.
By the turn of the 20th
Century, enough colleges were fielding basketball teams that leagues
began to form. The
NCAA was
founded in
Chicago
in 1906.
The first NCAA Men's College Basketball Championship tournament was held
before 5,500 fans in
Evanston, Illinois in
1939. That
year,
Oregon beat
Ohio State 46 to 33 in the final game to win the national
championship.
The first college games to
be televised took place at
Madison Square Garden in
1940.
Pittsburgh defeated
Fordham, 57 to 37, and
NYU beat
Georgetown, 50 to 27. Since the advent of television, the popularity
of college basketball has exploded.
March Madness is consistently one of the most watched events of the
year and draws over 700,000 fans.
Division I Men's
Basketball
As of the
2004-05
season, there are currently 330
colleges and
universities fielding Division I Men's Basketball teams. 47 states
boast at least one Division I Men's Basketball program; only
Alaska,
North Dakota, and
South Dakota have none. (However,
North Dakota State University and
South Dakota State University are currently in the process of
transitioning to
Division I.)
Conferences
These teams play in 31
different conferences, which are classified as either
major or
mid-major conferences. The distinction is unofficial; indeed, the
winners of all 31 conferences receive an automatic bid to play in the
NCAA Division I Men's Basketball Tournament alongside 34 at-large
selections. However, the teams from "major" conferences are the
traditional powers and continue to dominate the game to this day, thanks
in part to the relative ease they have in attracting blue-chip
high school recruits. The major-conference teams also have the
benefit of playing a tougher schedule, more easily garnering respect.
Accordingly, most of the 34 at-large selections on
Selection Sunday go to major-conference teams. The following are
currently considered to be the major conferences in college basketball:
The six conferences that
are members of the
Bowl Championship Series (BCS) in
college football:
Three other non-BCS
conferences that play Division I-A college football:
One conference whose
football members play in Division I-AA:
(It should be noted that
some teams play in different conferences in different sports. For
example,
Temple University plays football in the
Big East and basketball in the
Atlantic 10, and vice versa for
Villanova University. Many of the
A-10 football teams play in mid-major conferences in basketball.)
The current members of the
six BCS conferences, Conference USA, and the Mountain West Conference
have won every
NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship since 1967, although
some teams' championships predate their memberships in their current
conferences. Conference USA will likely lose its "major" status in July
2005 when 8
of its 14 basketball members leave for other conferences, five to the
Big East alone. (All of the C-USA schools that have won national titles
are among the schools leaving for the Big East.) The Mountain West and
Atlantic 10, which are also gaining members from Conference USA, are
more secure in their "major" status at this time.
Only two of the 21
mid-major basketball conferences play
Division I-A football: the
Mid-American Conference and the
Sun Belt Conference. Of the remaining conferences, some play in
Division I-AA (e.g. the
Ivy
League) and the others don't compete in football at all (e.g. the
West Coast Conference). The following are considered mid-major
conferences in college basketball:
No mid-major team has made
it to the
Final Four since 1979, when
Penn and a
Larry Bird-led
Indiana State both made it to the semifinals, each losing to
Magic Johnson's
Michigan State team (Penn in the semifinals, and Indiana State in
the final). However, the trend in recent years has been towards parity
among all the schools in
Division I, and practically every year a perennial major-conference
power loses to an unheralded mid-major team in
the tournament. In recent years,
Gonzaga has become the closest thing to a power in mid-major
basketball, having made it as far as the quarterfinals in 1999 and in
the years since ranking highly in the influential
AP Top 25 Poll and the
Ratings Percentage Index throughout the basketball season.
Increasingly, basketball analysts are considering Gonzaga to be a major
program that happens to play in a mid-major conference.
Finally, a small number of
teams (currently eight) compete in Division I basketball as so-called
"Independents", without belonging to any conference. Oftentimes, these
teams have just moved up to Division I from a lower division, and
compete independently while hoping to eventually secure a spot in a
conference. They are generally among the least-competitive teams in
college basketball.
Relationship to
Professional Basketball
In past decades, the
NBA only
drafted college graduates. This was a mutually beneficial relationship
for the NBA and colleges -- the colleges held onto players who would
otherwise go professional, and the NBA did not have to fund a minor
league. For the most part, players benefited from the college education.
As the college game became commercialized, though, it became
increasingly difficult for "student athletes" to be students.
Specifically, a growing number of poor (usually black), under-educated,
highly talented teenage basketball players found the system exploitative
-- they brought in funds to schools where they learned little and played
without income. In
1974,
Moses Malone joined the
Utah Stars of the
ABA (now merged with the
NBA) straight
out of high school and went on to be a star. The past 30 years have seen
a remarkable change in the college game. The best international players
routinely skip college entirely, many American stars skip college (Kobe
Bryant and
LeBron James) or only play one year (Carmelo
Anthony), and only a dozen or so college graduates are now among the
60 players selected in the annual
NBA
Draft.
The pervasiveness of
college basketball throughout the nation, the large population of
graduates from "major conference" universities, and the NCAA's brilliant
marketing of "March
Madness" (officially the
NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Championship), have kept the
college game alive and well. Some commentators have argued that the
higher turnover of players has increased the importance of good coaches.
Many teams have been highly successful, for instance, by emphasizing
personality in their recruiting efforts, with the goal of creating a
cohesive group that, while lacking stars, plays together for all 4 years
and thus develops a higher level of sophistication than less stable
teams could achieve.
Other Divisions
While less commercialized,
Women's Division I, and Division II and III, both Women's and Men's, are
highly successful college basketball organizations. Women's Division I
is often televised, but to smaller audiences than Men's Division I.
Generally, small colleges join Division II, while colleges of all sizes
that choose not to offer athletic scholarships join Division III. D-II
and D-III games, understandably, are almost never televised. Many teams
at these levels have rabid fan bases, though, and to those fans these
games can be equally or more entertaining than big-name college
basketball.
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