NCAA Basketball: Why do mid-majors get less respect than power schools?

Disrespect

Even despite all the accomplishments and the history that mid-major schools are solely responsible for, they still don’t get the respect they deserve and not just nationally. The age of social media has perpetuated the stigma. Along with the age of social media, the NCAA and the big networks have not done anything to end the stigma either. What stigma exactly?  The stigma that the mid-majors should not be held with as high regard for their contributions to the game of basketball than their power six counterparts.

Starting with the NCAA, the NCAA has never done anything to help the mid-majors get ahead. They have proven on countless occasions that the powers that be are not going to come down as hard on those power schools. The power schools make much of the money which goes to help the NCAA stay afloat. The NCAA is not going to destroy their cash cow. It is ridiculous to think that the NCAA as a governing body goes on a witch hunt to just throw out punishment to mid-majors.

They only punish those who deserve to be punished, but the punishment for the mid-majors has often been way more severe than the crime. That is one way to perpetuate the stigma and doesn’t set a good precedent for abiding by the rules. It has been reinforced that if the school makes the NCAA a lot of money the punishment is going to be nothing or very light. The NCAA does have a chance to right the ship and help change the narrative when the punishments get issued for the FBI investigation.

Next would be the national media stations like Fox Sports and ESPN. ESPN does put low major teams on their network, but other than the games they play they don’t provide the same coverage that they would the power schools. The network has been notorious for pushing their agendas led by Trae Young and Zion Williamson. To be clear ESPN does provide one night usually Friday nights to give to mid-major schools, these games are usually played on of the ESPN sister networks of ESPN2 or ESPNU. The coverage of feast week and championship week is some of the best around, but ESPN could be and should be doing so much more.

It is not known why the shift at ESPN happened but when it did the coverage, they used to provide to the little man went with it. Everyone remembers the 24-hour hoops marathon to begin the season, it always led right into a huge primetime game between two juggernauts. The games leading up to that though was almost always mid-majors looking for their time to shine in the only time they were going to get on a national network all year long, the arenas were sold out and it was some of the best basketball in the best most intimate environments in the country.

ESPN also used to sponsor the bracket busters week. When smaller schools would take a break from their conference schedule and play another Mid Major. Those were also extremely exciting games every year. The shift in scheduling within the game and the networks no longer willing to sponsor those games has led to both the marathon and the bracket buster games being discontinued.

Currently, as mentioned Friday nights are reserved for the mid-majors often for the Horizon League or another conference. Smaller conferences including the HBCU’s in the MEAC and the SWAC are reserved to off networks like Flo Sports, ESPN3, or ESPN+. All of those require a subscription to view the games. The loss of the marathon and bracket busters has hurt those teams the most. Fox Sports has no nights reserved for mid-major basketball, especially the smaller conferences.

Outside of the subscription services those teams are reserved for NBC Sports and CBS Sports Net both of which are not going to be part of a normal cable package even then the games on those networks don’t favor the little schools. The mid-majors deserve better and there is so much untapped potential waiting in the wings for whatever network decides to dedicate a legitimate amount of air time for these schools. It would be good for basketball, and it would only increase viewership on the network.

The Media industry has done a lot to help shape the way the world thinks about things good and bad. The schools are not getting the coverage from any of the networks on a regular basis and when the talking heads at the networks spew out the ideas that the mid-majors play no one and their schedules are not good enough because of the conference they play in or vice versa is something that fans are going to latch on to.  Most of the schools that fall into this category are starving for any coverage both in the print, digital, and TV world.