"Overheard: West Virginia basketball coach Bob Huggins has a novel idea for expanding the NCAA basketball tournament. "We should do what football did," he told us. "We need to make criteria as to what a Division One school is. In terms of support both from the school and from the fan base just like football. … Then you can have a Division 1A playoff and a Division 1 AA playoff.""
source:
http://www.chicagotribune.com/sports/breaking/ct-spt-0407-around-town--20110406,0,7778031.column
With two mid-majors crashing the final four, depriving the big schools of their revenue, I'm actually surprised I haven't heard more talk of this.
yes, this is just one man's suggestion, not a legitimate proposal, but I don't much care for it.
this kind of talk started as far back as the 1950's and it was steeped in racism
....
..it was very unfair then and even if it's not so racist now, it is unfair and it's the same "big boys" ruling class that's trying to shut out anyone of their own dislike...
No black player ever played in the ACC until 1965 (Billy Jones - Maryland). Is this amazing or what!
Two years later Charlie Scott was the first Black to get a scholarship to North Carolina.
And here's what's even more amazing - the first black player in the Southeastern Conference (SEC) did not play until 1967 (Perry Wallace - Vanderbilt).
Back in the 1950's.......as many of the nationally prominent teams and powerful basketball schools like Kentucky, Kansas, Stanford, and Big Ten teams were white and they were furious over the fact that smaller schools like CCNY, Bradley, San Francisco, Loyola, Texas Western (UTEP) and Cincinnati had the audacity to incorporate Black players onto their roster...then on top of that to have the audacity to whip the butts of the all top white squads like Kentucky, Kansas, Cal, and Ohio State..
That was when the big boys got together and started this idea of two different divisions......
by the late 1950's all of college basketball was divided into the "College Division" (Small College) and the "University Division" (Major College)...as most of the "smaller" colleges were way ahead of the major schools in racial integration and incorporating Black Americans onto their teams.
Sadly -- some of the greatest Black players plied their trades in near obscurity at small colleges that were essentially excluded from any chance of playing at the national level and no big school would ever schedule them!
Here are just a few examples......
-Coach John Wooden while at Indiana State in 1947 had a Black kid named Clarence Walker but while Walker played, Indiana State Teachers College (as they were known then) was even banned from some tournaments that didn't allow Blacks...and at thet time the Big Ten had in place a "Gentleman's agreement that barred Black players".
Indiana State remained a "small college" and wasn't D-I until decades later..
-talented NBA-caliber Black players such as Earl Lloyd (West Virginia State), Nat Clifton (Xavier of Louisiana), Sam Jones (North Carolina Central), Earl "The Pearl" Monroe (Winston-Salem State), Willis Reed (Grambling), Zelmo Beatty (Prairie View A&M), and many, many others never got a look from big colleges and had to play for their small schools in relative obscurity...
Hopefully sopmeone on a national level will call out this kind of arrogant and discriminatory thinking by Huggins and others...and say it like it is...
it is UNFAIR and it is wrong to exclude teams who deserve to be there........