Kentucky men’s basketball head coach Mark Pope wants to see his team in more big-time games.
From the perspective of a coach, it makes sense, too. The more big games you play in the regular season the more you’re able to prepare for March. If your conference tournament or the NCAA Tournament is one of the first times your team has felt the pressure of a big moment, that’s a bad omen for your team’s ability to go deep.
Perhaps that’s why Pope is calling for an extended schedule that will feature more big-time matchups.
“Can we please extend the season?” Pope recently opined in an interview with KSR (h/t On3). “Because we get Purdue and Georgetown, which is awesome, but come on, man, let us do a home-and-home with Kansas. Like, why am I not going to Storrs (UConn) to play a game like we should be? We need some more flexibility to this. And also, let us get to Maui now. Part of the complication is that we make so much revenue off our home games that I’m locked into this 20-game home slate. We have to do that to pay the bills for us and for the athletic department, which is good.
“But bring on some more flexibility so we play some more games that every school can actually bring in some more revenue, that we can share with these student athletes, that we share with the rest of athletic department.”
Revenue is the name of the game in college sports and Pope is spot on in that bigger matchups will bring more revenue. Sure, schools like Kentucky are Kansas are going to sell out all of their home games regardless, but television revenue makes the world go ’round in college sports. Just like in college football, more big-time matchups means more eyeballs on the television screen.
Having more big games also puts some more importance back on the college basketball regular season. Unfortunately, it’s seemingly become “March or bust” outside of the handful of diehard college basketball fans out there. The sport’s regular season doesn’t feel important outside of those few marquee matchups, and even then, a team can lose a big game against a rival in January and still make a huge run through the tournament in March.
The point is, flexibility in scheduling is good. Pope believes that making the season longer would do that. No matter how it happens, though, it’s basically a must for college basketball.
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