Next year's post-season

The NCAA is set to do away with the College Basketball Invitational and the CollegeInsider.com Tournament in time for next season's post-season play.

But it's answer to appeasing "March Madness" in America's college basketball fandom is totally wrong. Now they will award teams for losing.

It's to be announced this summer that the 32 first-round NCAA Tournament losers and the 16 first-round NIT losers will be seeded into a 48-team event they're calling the NCAA Second Chance Tournament.

Why do this? Money.

Recall that a few years ago the NCAA rejected a $2.5 billion offer from Switzerland-based Global Concepts to run a 16-team football national championship.

Well, they're back, this time Global CFO Loof Lirpa has offered $200 million a year if it can be sole sponsor of the Second Chance Tournament, where games will be shown on various sports networks, including the new College Basketball Channel.

I say the NCAA should have told Loof Lirpa and Global to stick their money into getting Switzerland and some other countries decent national basketball teams. Or host a new ski-jumping event.

Adding more and more games at the end of the U.S. college basketball season simply dilutes the sport.

This is not the first time Loof Lirpa has emerged on this day of the year. Like the groundhog on Feb. 2, Loof Lirpa seems to poke into sports business every April 1.

Comments

[obeyfez]

And here I thought Loof Lirpa was the guy trying to convince Tony Barbee to follow Calipari to Kentucky.

[rayman]

For god's sakes Joe, you're wrong. Loof Lirpa is not Swiss. He's Chinese. Have a great 4/1! By the way, I heard that the EPT is in talks to merge with NPT and it looks promising.

[PISTOL]

NICE TO HEAR LOOF LIRPA TODAY ..... I THOUGHT ABOUT HIM THIS MORNING FROM WAY BACK WHEN IN THE 80'S WHEN HE SIGNED TO PLAY FOR UTEP BASKETBALL........ HAVE A GOOD ONE.

[strelz]

some will actually believe this april fools day joke.

[jjminerfan]

I thought he played center for us in the 80's?????????

[El Paso Demo]

Another Loof Lirpa article. How original. Joe's been "fooling" me with these every year since the mid 80's. The only funnier April Fool's joke is suggesting that Tony Barbee would actually prefer to be an assistant at Kentucky than a head coach at UTEP (or anywhere, for that matter). That was a much more ridiculous blog.