NEW ORLEANS (AP) – If the nine months that led to Monday night’s national title game between Kansas and North Carolina have proven anything, it’s that college basketball and all of college sports are changing.
Whoever shapes all these changes – and it won’t necessarily be the NCAA – will help decide whether the next decade in this multibillion-dollar ecosystem of sports, entertainment and education grows into an efficiently run business or devolves into chaos. Either is a possibility.
The NCAA has struggled with the rules and outcomes of efforts to pay players, ensure gender equity, lock in the newly relaxed transfer portal, streamline an increasingly cluttered infractions system and, of course, deal with the long-debated “One and Done” rule.
And while the governing body is all but waving the white flag when it comes to figuring out many of the transformative shifts that these problems present, there’s a growing sense that that might not be a bad thing.
“This is not the time to look at nits and bits,” Duke coach Mike Krzyzewski said Friday, the day before his loss to North Carolina sealed his retirement. “It’s time to look at the whole thing.”