NCAA hypocrisy

Bob Holliday

Veteran reporter Bob Holliday joined WRAL-TV in 1981. He anchors the weekend news and covers a variety of topics for WRAL.

By Bob Holliday
Mar 26, 2009

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While watching No. 1 seed Duke get whipped in front of the frenzied crowd of No. 9 seed Michigan State, I was struck by the hypocrisy of the NCAA with regard to its tournament policies. Stay with me here - this gets a little complicated.

In 1982, the former czar of the NCAA Men’s Tournament, Dave Cawood, decided to kick local TV stations out of his event. The NCAA Women’s Tournament Committee rightfully reasoned that their event would get more and better coverage if local television stations were allowed to shoot the games in their event - as these stations are allowed to do at most other major sporting events. In 1990, the NCAA pressured the Women’s Committee to adopt Cawood’s ridiculous rules. Their reasoning: The NCAA policies for the men’s and women’s tournaments must be consistent.

So in 1990, when we sent a crew to cover perhaps Kay Yow’s most talented N.C. State team in the Eastern Regional, the NCAA barred us from doing our job inside the arena, which happened to be the Palestra. To obtain video, our crew had to patch in a record deck to ESPN’s truck, on a cold night in a bad neighborhood in Philadelphia. Our station should have been rewarded for spending the money to cover and promote women’s basketball. Instead, not only were our cameras barred from the arena, but our crew and our equipment were put in harm’s way. All in the name of the NCAA maintaining policies that were consistent for both the men’s and women’s tournament.

Imagine my surprise when I checked out the brackets for this year’s NCAA Women’s Tournament, and found that several schools, including Michigan State and Rutgers, were allowed to play on their home courts! This is strictly forbidden in the NCAA Men’s Tournament. So much for having consistent policies. Not only does the NCAA Women’s Tournament allow teams to play on their home courts, they allow lower seeded teams to play higher seeded teams on their home courts. Auburn, a two seed, was forced to play at Rutgers, a seven seed. Duke, a one seed, had to play at Michigan State, a nine seed. Both Auburn and Duke lost.

Until a few years ago, the NCAA Women’s Tournament staged first- and second-round games on the home courts of the top four seeds in each region. This was deemed too big an advantage for the seeded teams. So the NCAA Women’s Committee began holding the events at neutral sites. Unfortunately, they found they couldn’t sell tickets at many of these neutral sites unless the host school was allowed to play at home. So now the NCAA doles out an unfair advantage to Rutgers and Michigan State, and penalizes Auburn and Duke, both of whom had earned the opportunity to play at a neutral site closer to their campuses. Please note: the NCAA Men’s Tournament Committee, in yet another NCAA inconsistency, gives its top seeds the advantage of playing on a neutral court, the neutral court closest to those schools.

So the NCAA Women’s Tournament Committee needs to act. It must go to purely neutral sites, with no team playing on its home court, regardless of the economic consequences. Or it should go back to letting the top seeds play at home, recognizing that they have earned the right to have an advantage by virtue of their won-lost record during the regular season.

And finally, the NCAA should abandon the hypocrisy that its Men’s and Women’s Tournaments are the same. They are not. Let us shoot the games.

Most Recent Comments

RE: NCAA hypocrisy

This is the best written piece I've seen that addresses the situation. Unlike complaining fans who only cried about the location, Bob actually points out the inconsistencies of what the NCAA has said and what they have done in a larger scale. Excellent work Bob.

And by the way, I think it is ridiculous that local media outlets aren't allowed to shoot their own footage for their news programming.

RE: NCAA Hypocrisy

Thank you for the interesting piece you wrote, Bob. I was very surprised that a #1 seed would be playing on a lower seed's court, the ultimate irony being that it was Joanne P. McCauley's former team's court. While in my opinion playing at Michigan State didn't cost Duke the game, it was still an unfair advantage to Michigan State to play a home game. To her credit, Head Duke Women's Coach Joanne P. McCauley was very gracious in the defeat of her team and she credited Michigan State's excellent play for the win - a very classy thing to do. We can only hope the NCAA Committee changes their policies soon.

RE: NCAA Hypocrisy

I totally agree with you that the NCAA is more than hypocritical in its site selection process for the women's tournament Bob. However, it is my opinion that Duke having to play Michigan State on its home court was not a factor in their loss. While not an avid follower of women's basketball I just happened to watch the Middle TN State-MI State game as well as the Duke-MI State game. Middle TN should have won their game. They outplayed MI State with the exception of the last 3 minutes. Atich, the 6'3" C for MI State was a non-factor. She killed Duke & that coupled with Duke's abysmal 58% FT shooting were the differences in the game given that both teams shot miserably from the field. Unfortunately, I think Duke simply beat itself regardless of where the game was played & that was very sad for the 3 seniors. The site selection process definitely needs to change for the women, but when it comes to tourney time, even for the men, the NCAA is all about $$$$$$!

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