Let's get the obvious out of the way: Playoffs are exciting. They're sexy. They rank up there with Schmidley playing 10 consecutive games of ship. But unlike Schmidley's marathon sessions, a playoff for Ivy League basketball is a bad idea.
The case for a playoff is compelling. Consider the plight of our men's team. Dartmouth is clearly better than the 2-8 in conference record indicates, as demonstrated by the team's decisive victory against Princeton on Saturday. Yet the team does not have a chance at winning the league championship this year. More importantly, they have no hope of joining the NCAA playoffs.
Schmidley is right when he says that teams are defined by their playoff performance. Except in college basketball, you're defined by what you do in the king of all playoffs, March Madness. For an Ivy League team, simply making the tourney is the mark of a successful season. And if an Ivy can pull off a first-round upset, its season becomes truly special.
So why not institute a postseason tournament for the Ivy League? Precisely because of the importance given to the NCAA Tournament in basketball. Let's be realistic: No Ivy team is ever going to be awarded an at-large bid. And if the Ancient Eight had a tournament, then the only team heading to the dance would be the tourney winner. The regular season would thus cease to be meaningful -- it would turn into one long preseason. Maybe this bodes well for the teams at the bottom of the league standings, but we should be rewarding teams that produce throughout the regular season, capturing a body of work instead of one-and-done performances.
But there is another slightly less obvious reason why a playoff is a bad idea. As we all know, school apathy is fairly high for most Dartmouth teams, basketball included. Did you watch the Memphis-Tennessee tilt on Saturday? We could never dream of matching that type of arena atmosphere, no matter how good the Big Green becomes. A playoff could have a dual-effect on fan support. While such a system might generate interest in the season-ending tournament, it would damage interest in the regular season because of its decreased significance. The chance to attend late-season home games where an Ivy title and NCAA berth are on the line would be gone. We would just be biding time until the playoff.
And what of this hypothetical tournament? Well, it would probably mirror other conferences' tournaments, which would mean that the Ivy League would select a single site as host. In all likelihood, then, we are looking at a tournament in New York or Boston. Perhaps the eight constituent schools might rotate as hosts, but even if that's the case, the truth is that Dartmouth fans would not get the chance to watch the team compete in a playoff all that often.
You think fans will travel to the site? Be reasonable. Our teams are troubled enough by a lack of interest, pleading with fellow students through e-mails and gimmicks to draw a crowd. Let's not stack the odds even more.
Ultimately, a playoff isn't in the best interest of the league. It may be an intriguing idea, but so was the Knicks' hiring of Isiah Thomas and we've all seen how well that's worked out. Leave Ivy League basketball the way it is.
