NCAA Basketball: Will realignment ruin college basketball?

What can be done to help college basketball have a bigger stake in the future of college athletics?

Potential solutions to these problems are where basketball runs into some issues. Something should change if things like the Champion's Classic are barely a blip on the ratings radar. Maybe switch up the participants instead of rotating the matchups considering no team in the event other than Kansas has won a title since 2015. Maybe add the two-time defending champs UConn to the mix and leave one spot open for the previous season's champ.

That is just one event though. How can they get people watching now consistently early on? I don't have answers, but a couple of things they could try would be combining some of the multi-team events to give off more of a longer March Madness feel to them in some way. They could also bring back some sort of Bracket Busters event earlier in the year. However, instead of having mid-major teams face off, they could battle potential bubble teams from power conferences. There are logistical things and money that will make some say that changes to the status quo are impossible, but some things out there are at least worth trying.

Another problem basketball faces is how to get more eyeballs while keeping the integrity of what makes its postseason great. That is to say, how can teams that people want to watch be involved without further empowering the resumes of power-conference teams while continuing to disadvantage mid-majors?

Some sort of revamped Bracket Busters would help that, but improving ratings during college football season enough for the NCAA and advertisers to take notice will be an uphill battle and time is of the essence if we don't want to lose college basketball as we knew it to the money hungry machine that is college football.