R.I.P. to the College Conference Format — Welcome to the Conference Tourney
Although I’ve always been primarily an NBA fan, there are parts of the college game that I find unrelentingly alluring. Prime among them is the use of conference play and the resultant regional rivalries, as well as the dense history, tradition, and lore that sprouts from these longstanding competitive relationships. One of my favorite parts of the classic John Feinstein chronicle Season on the Brink is something largely unimportant and innocuous that, nevertheless, felt to me like an embodiment of the appeal of college sports: travel to and from games. I initially found it quirky that Feinstein devoted text to covering how the team moved from one place to the other, something so critical and necessary, yet inconspicuous and usually veiled to the uncaring public. And yet Feinstein managed to paint the picture in such a nostalgic, charming, and fascinating light that, in hindsight, it seemed salient to highlight the journeys as a paramount stage setting component of college sports. For example, imagine traveling six hours to face a neighboring powerhouse who also happens to be a hated rival and their packed gymnasium of well-rested and hostile fans who only had to walk across campus, for a nationally televised game on a week night, then playing a grueling game only to turn around and make the long trip home again, sometimes in bad weather and sometimes with class the next day.¹ The travel is nearly as imposing as the on-court opponent.
This resonates of Americana to me and reflects basketball’s coziness and deep roots, reflecting its core appeal as a game that can be played between almost any two communities regardless of size. And, unfortunately, it’s something not present in the professional game due to logistics and the vast swaths of money available to pro franchises.
Forgive my bloviating, but I wanted to highlight this particular appeal of college basketball because its something that recent conference realignment in the college game has diminished. The upcoming demise of the Pac-10 was particularly startling to me. Despite all this, the excitement of conference play remains for me and I wanted this blog’s next hypothetical to honor the history of college basketball and the old conferences which comprised it.
- Hypothetical — What if every NCAA basketball conference in history picked one player from each of their member schools to form a team to face off in a tournament against each other.
I reviewed 45 conferences from the history of college basketball, including defunct ones. One player from each school in these conferences can be selected with a maximum of 12 roster spots per conference. So, if a conference has more than 12 teams then some schools will go unrepresented in the conference roster. Conferences with fewer than 12 schools can still take part, albeit with a smaller roster. The one player cap per school helps to diversify the number of schools represented on the hypothetical teams and levels the playing field by preventing schools with loads of NBA talent like UNC or UCLA from dominating squads.²
There are a few key aspects to consider for this hypothetical:
- We’re only considering the specific time period in which a school was a member of a conference. For example, Maryland left the ACC to join the Big 10 in 2014, so only players that have played for the Terps since 2014 will be eligible for selection to the Big 10 squad, whereas players representing the Terps prior to 2014 will be eligible for selection to the ACC squad. Furthermore, duplicate players are permitted and we’re not restricting transfers to representing one school. So if a player competed two years for Duke and two years for Indiana, they’ll be eligible for selection in both the ACC and Big 10 and could theoretically appear on both squads. Similarly, if a player played four years at one school but that school switched conferences while the player was there, then they could theoretically appear on both conference teams. Given the amount of player movement and conference hopping that schools have done over the past 70 years, there are several instances where a player is eligible to represent three conferences.
- Time on the court doesn’t matter. If a player was enrolled in a school for one year but redshirted the entire season before transferring to another school, they’re still eligible to represent the school for which they redshirted. This helps to keep my research a bit more manageable.
- Players are selected on their NBA success, not their college success. For example, although Christian Laettner is regarded as one of the best college players ever, he doesn’t make the ACC squad as Duke’s representative due to the many Blue Devils who went on to have far more successful professional careers than Laettner.
- Only players who played at least 100 games in the NBA, or are first or second year players who have not yet had a chance to play 100 games due to circumstance or injury, are eligible for selection. This also helps to keep things manageable and reduces the number of conferences that are able to fill out an entire squad. The games played are as of the 2023 offseason.
- As usual, I’m attempting to build cohesive rosters. Therefore, I won’t always be deferring to the best player a school has to offer. If a school has one player who made an All-Star team in the NBA but that player’s skillset is redundant to the other players already on the squad, then I’ll probably pass them over for a less decorated role player.
Of the 45 conferences reviewed, I took the 16 resulting rosters that had the most total games played among its selected players. I’ll place these teams in a classic single-elimination tournament with yours truly as the arbiter. I’ll be assuming that all of the players are performing at their peak NBA powers and I’ll assume that modern tactics and rules are in place.
I’m not yet sure how many teams I’ll present in each weekly post, but I do want to get started this week by presenting the 16 seed in order to give a taste of what to expect. Interestingly, the 16 seed is both a defunct conference and one that couldn’t field an entire 12-man squad, yet it still had enough history and prestige to sneak into the field thanks to several all-time great players available for selection. As such, despite being the 16 seed, our first conference could still be a legit contender…
The Big 8 Conference
The Big 8 was the predecessor conference to the modern Big 12. It was founded in 1907 and lasted nearly ninety years until disbanding in 1996. All eight of the schools subsequently joined the Big 12 alongside four new schools, so there’s a lot of overlap between the Big 8 and Big 12. I initially considered treating both conferences as one, but they’re technically and legally considered as two separate entities with two separate histories, so I ultimately opted to keep them split. Obviously, there are only eight eligible schools from which to pick so the roster is smaller than all of the other teams seeded above them. And yet, the eight players picked still had extensive enough NBA careers to eke out enough games played to nab the 16 seed. Let’s take a look at the selected squad.³
- PG — Chauncey Billups (Colorado — 1,043 games played)
SG — Mitch Richmond (Kansas State — 976)
SF — Jeff Hornacek (Iowa State — 1,077)
PF — Gar Heard (Oklahoma — 787)
C — Wilt Chamberlain (Kansas — 1,045)
B — Larry Drew (Missouri — 714)
B — Stu Lantz (Nebraska — 547)
B — Bryant Reeves (Oklahoma State — 395) - Total Games Played — 6,584
The biggest decision of this group came from its heaviest hitter and one of the bluest of blue bloods in college basketball history: Kansas. Even after excluding all of the modern era players from the 1996–97 season onward, there are still a bunch of strong players who warranted consideration like Bill Bridges, Danny Manning, and Dave Robisch, as well as Hall of Famers Clyde Lovellette and Jo Jo White. But this decision ultimately boiled down to two players: Wilt Chamberlain and Paul Pierce. Pierce barely made the cut for consideration as his freshman year occurred during the final season of the Big 8’s existence. Typically, Chamberlain would be an easy choice over Pierce for me in just about any scenario. However, I was intrigued to find that the Big 8 had a surprising dearth of top-end wing talent, but a few formidable big men. As such, I strongly considered picking Pierce as the alpha scorer for this squad and plugging in a few good, but not all-time-great, big men around him. But, in the end, Chamberlain is simply too good to deny, so he made the cut.
The next toughest decision was Oklahoma, as they had an impressive pool of big men from which to choose including Alvan Adams, Gar Heard, Clifford Ray, and Wayman Tisdale, as well as wings Harvey Grant and Stacey King, and point guard Mookie Blaylock. My two preferred players from this group are Adams and Blaylock, though neither ultimately made the team. Adams missed out because he’d be backing up Chamberlain, so I’d prefer to pick a player from another position who can play alongside Chamberlain. And Mookie missed out because Chauncey Billups (more on him next) was a clearly superior option as the starting point guard. As such, I opted for Gar Heard. Heard can slot in nicely next to Wilt as a complimentary piece.
Chauncey Billups was the easiest pick of all of the eligible schools. Like Pierce, Billups barely made the cut for consideration due to only having played one season in the conference, but he was a no-brainer. A few other solid options were available from Colorado in Jim Davis, Jay Humphries, Scott Wedman, and Chuck Williams, but Billups was the easy pick. So we started this squad out with Billups, Heard, and Wilt.
Two of the other easier picks came from Iowa State and Missouri, who yielded Jeff Hornacek and Larry Drew, respectively. A case could be made for the likes of Anthony Peeler or Steve Stipanovich from Missouri or Zaid Abdul-Aziz, Kelvin Cato, or Fred Hoiberg from Iowa State, but the combination of shooting, passing, dynamism, and overall upside of Hornacek and Drew were easy to pick.
Kansas State’s pick was between two great scorers in Rolando Blackman and Mitch Richmond. I love Bob Boozer too, but I felt that Blackman and Richmond were a tier above. My preference among the two is Richmond due to his shooting so he makes the cut and joins Hornacek and Billups for a deadeye backcourt. The presence of those three, as well as Larry Drew on the bench, made the Oklahoma State decision easier, as the Cowboys’ two best players are Bryant Reeves and John Starks. Starks is the better of the two, but the presence of four strong guards/wings means that Reeves is the better choice and can serve as a burly backup center to Wilt.
That left Nebraska as the last school to determine, which is fitting, as their players are all best-suited as role players, including Mikki Moore, Stu Lantz, Tyronn Lue, and Eric Piatkowski. I opted for Lantz from that group, though any would be a fine pick.
We’re off to a fun start! Any team with Wilt in the middle has a chance to compete and the offense around him should be incredibly difficult to stop given the spacing provided by Billups, Richmond, and Hornacek. Wing defense may be an issue and only having three backups available on the bench is an obvious disadvantage, but this team is a strong one nevertheless.
Footnotes
¹ Of course, Feinstein is able to convey this much more effectively and simply than I can. Here’s a quick two-sentence blurb solely about travel that managed to emphasize the pressure the players faced and to heighten the tension of the book. “[The snow] was still coming down hard when the team bused to the [Michigan State] arena that evening, and the possibility of having to bus the 300 miles home was discussed. The very thought of a six-hour bus ride with [Bobby Knight] after a loss was enough to make everyone just a little tighter.” I find this attention to the off-the-court factors that can swing a game from a win to a loss or vice versa to be enthralling!
² For example, a Pac-10 squad could have as many as 10 UCLA players and an ACC squad could have half-UNC players. Limiting each school to one makes this much more interesting.
³ For reference, here are the eligible schools and the timeframes from which we are able to select players:
Colorado from 1947 to 1996
Iowa State from 1908 to 1996
Kansas from 1907 to 1996
Kansas State from 1913 to 1996
Missouri from 1907 to 1996
Nebraska from 1907 to 1996
Oklahoma from 1919 to 1996
Oklahoma State from 1958 to 1996
