BracketBusters Comes to a Much Needed End (Opinion & Reaction)

[beauspencer]

While the BracketBusters gave the Summit League some nice national attention with ESPN2 televised games for the 'Jacks and NDSU Bison, the relevance of the event was lost long ago. Opinion and reaction on the final year of BracketBusters. http://www.mysummitleague.com/opinio...its-relevance/

[LakeJack]

Re: BracketBusters Comes to a Much Needed End (Opinion & Reaction)

I am going to disagree. The deal with Bracket Busters is that it was always about the TV games - That is way it kept getting expanded. ESPN was looking for the best match ups with the best story lines. If you are not one of the TV games ESPN didn't/doesn't really care much.

Our first year in it we played a Cal-Poly squad and neither team was very good, not a big plus up for SDSU. However last year and this year we were much better and playing Buffalo at home and Murray State on the road on TV netted us a lot of publicity and that was good.

If anything ruined Bracket Busters it was that some Mid-Major conferences started flexing their muscles and acting like Major conferences and influenced the format or decided they were too good to participate at all. The MVC didn't want to play Summit Schools that is why WIU didn't get one of those schools.

I think Bracket Busters is what you make of it. I will miss the opportunity - and that is all it was, an opportunity to help your program. Was it perfect? No. Did it do weird things to your schedule? Yes. But as Mid-Majors it is hard to get national exposure and so for me that opportunity was worth dealing with the idiosyncrasies of this made for TV event.

I guess next year we can look forward to more match ups of high major leaders like Duke, Kansas, Florida, etc. playing someone buried in the middle to lower part of their conference in those time slots. I will miss Bracket Busters.

[Nidaros]

Re: BracketBusters Comes to a Much Needed End (Opinion & Reaction)

I am going to disagree. The deal with Bracket Busters is that it is all about the TV games - That is way it kept getting expanded. ESPN was looking for the best match ups with the best story lines. If you are not one of the TV games ESPN doesn't really care much.

Our first year in it we played a Cal-Poly squad and neither team was very good, not a big plus up for SDSU. However last year and this year we were much better and playing Buffalo at home and Murray State on the road on TV netted us a lot of publicity and that was good.

If anything ruined Bracket Busters it was that some Mid-Major conferences started flexing their muscles and acting like Major conferences and influenced the format or decided they were too good to participate at all. The MVC didn't want to play Summit Schools that is why WIU didn't get one of those schools.

I think Bracket Busters is what you make of it. I will miss the opportunity - and that is all it was, an opportunity to help your program. Was it perfect? No. Did it do weird things to your schedule? Yes. But as Mid-Majors it is hard to get national exposure and so for me that opportunity was worth dealing with the idiosyncrasies of this made for TV event.

I guess next year we can look forward to another match up of a high major leader like Duke, Kansas, Florida, etc. playing someone buried in the middle to lower part of their conference in those time slots. I will miss Bracket Busters.

I really did not understand what this topic was all about until reading the link cited above. I dont think this is a bad idea. Publicity for SDSU and Nate seems to have benefited from playing the games on TV. We could go the high school route where everyone starts by playing in the district. Seldom to the high rated teams get knocked off in the first round, but it does happen. I suppose the BrackerBuster notion is a step in the direction of high school, but its good for the mid majors. Dollars are of course the big dictators of what happens next.