Nearing 2,000

Written by Ian | 21 December 2009

The Drexel University Dragons are all that stand between the University of Kentucky Wildcat basketball team and 2,000 wins.  No other team in NCAA Division One basketball has attained that number of wins yet.  For UK fans, it's supposed to be a big deal.  There will likely be some celebration after the game, and for two or three weeks UK fans will be able to add "we're the only team with 2,000 wins" to every argument in which they would use the phrase "we've got seven national championships."  The big question tonight is does this really matter?

Tradition has meant a lot to college sports.  Twenty years ago every kid wanted to play basketball at Kentucky, North Carolina, or Kansas.  At that time every young man wanted to play football for Notre Dame, Southern Cal, Michigan, or Tennessee.  High school student-athletes wanted to play for these teams because they were good.  They also wanted to play for these teams because they had been good for as long as they could remember.

Past and present success isn't the only reason kids attend a specific college.  Another big reason, and one that only started to be prominent in the past 20 years, is exposure.  In 1991 you could attend many of the big name schools for football.  You could go to Michigan or Tennessee and play in front of 100,000 people a week.  Things changed a bit that year when kids started hearing that you could go to Notre Dame and play in front of 2 million people a week.  When NBC signed that contract things changed a lot.  Notre Dame, who was never lacking for a recruiting pitch in the first place, immediately had another edge on other programs.  They were still pitching tradition at that point, but in 1992 they could start telling recruits they would be playing on TV every week.

What happened at Notre Dame is actually very interesting.  They signed that big TV contract and twenty years later they're still hanging on to it.  The problem for Notre Dame is that every other major program in the country is playing on national television weekly as well.  In fact, after ESPN and the SEC signed a huge contract this past season you're now able to watch teams like Ole Miss, Kentucky, and South Carolina several times per year across the nation.

Now things have changed again in college sports.  Notre Dame no longer has the edge in pitching television coverage to recruits.  Like Kentucky, Kansas, and North Carolina in basketball, they can't fall back on their tradition to pull in every top recruit.  This is because the elite high school recruits in 2010 want to know what you can do for them.  What can you do for them that USC can't?  What does you university offer that Florida doesn't?  Can you offer something that Duke doesn't in college hoops?

If your answer is "we've won two of the last national championships in football because we have elite coaches and great players to play alongside you," then that's hard to turn down.  "Our coach has sent the last two point guard prospects he's coached to the NBA as lottery picks," is a good way to recruit point guard prospects.  "We've sent at least 5 kids to the NFL every year for the past 10 years because we have good position coaches and top-rate facilities."  Quotes like these get elite recruits to attend your school.  Elite recruits win ball games.  Winning ball games puts you on television more, gets you more top recruits, and creates a positive feedback system of success in your program.

Unfortunately, "we've won seven national championships", "our tradition is unlike any other", and "we won seven straight titles from 1967 to 1973" don't hack it in the recruiting world any more.  Hell, Wyoming has won a national title in basketball.  This information was contained in the broadcast of the Tennessee vs. Wyoming game the other night.  It's doubtful that Tyler Smith would have transferred to Wyoming if Heath Schroyer would have phoned him up and said "we won it all in 1943!"  Instead he chose to go play for a school close to his home, a coach who was charismatic and hot on national coverage at the time, and at a program with very nice facilities including a revamped arena.

There are obviously some kids who like the idea of playing for a big-time national power.  Many even say "I like the tradition at Kentucky/North Carolina/Kansas."  I call bullshit.  Most kids don't give two shits about tradition.  They really go to those schools because of Coaches Calipari, Williams, or Self.  They choose their schools based on system, facilities, and exposure.

Recruits don't want to know how many titles you won before they got there.  They want to know how many you'll win once they get there.  Kids these days don't care who Dan Issell or Clyde Lovellette were.  They want to hear about Michael Jordan, Paul Pierce, and Derrick Rose.  Young men don't care about becoming the leading scorer in the history of your program.  They just want to get to the NBA as fast as possible to have a chance at become the League's all time leading scorer.

These are all general arguments, but if you want concrete proof that kids don't care about tradition look inside the numbers.  The following are UK basketball, Notre Dame football, and UCLA basketball records from recent memory.  If tradition were still the king, none of these schools would have these type of down times.

Kentucky Basketball: 2007-2009 40-27 (0.597)
Notre Dame Football: 2005-2009 35-27 (0.565)
UCLA Basketball: 2009-2010 3-7 (0.300)

Kentucky goes for win 2,000 tonight.  They may beat Drexel by 17 and kick off a mess of confetti and a gaggle of bloviating fools talking about how great it all has been.  On December 22nd will any of that matter?  Not to me.  Only 7 of those 2,000 are really that important to me, and having 2,027 at the end of the year won't matter to me either if the last one ends up being an "L."