By

There are countless meaningful and exciting basketball games going on in March, none of these games are found at the College Basketball Invitational.

The University of Cincinnati embarrassed the Big East conference on a semi-national stage by first competing in the CBI and then even worse, losing to Bradley University in the first round.

The CBI is a new tournament supplementing the NCAA tournament and National Invitational Tournament. The tournament is being thrown by the Gazelle Group, the same lovely people that brought pre-phenom Tyreke Evans to Freedom Hall and sold tickets for $24 and $10 each and expected 10,000 plus fans to show up to a high school game.

The Princeton, N.J. sports organization has shown a willingness to take high school and collegiate athletes out of class for their own financial benefits. Unfortunately, 16 universities competing in the CBI and high schools like Evans’ have found the price to be right.

Gazelle holds preseason college basketball tournaments in addition to their new postseason experiment. They kicked off the 2007 season with the Blue Ribbon Classic on Nov. 9 and will end it on April 4 2008. Gazelle’s basketball season spans for 146 days. That means 61 percent of the days University of Louisville is in session, including holidays and weekends, college basketball is being played.

Imagine trying to succeed as a student when you have to travel the country during 61 percent of your academic calendar. Athletes need to be afforded the opportunity to get back to being students.

The NCAA tournament and NIT currently offer the opportunity for 97 teams to extend their season. Championships like the NCAA tournament are a great opportunity for student athletes to get a pay off for all of their hard work. The NIT supplements this, and its usefulness is even in question, hence their recent downsizing. Anything else dilutes the word “championship” and is simply a round-robin.

For teams with a 13-19 record, like Cincinnati, the students need to spend March in the classroom, preparing for exams, not on the court preparing for a third-rate tournament. UC in particular, who has struggled mightily with men’s basketball graduation rates, should emphasize academia.

Competing in this tournament puts a scarlet letter on your university that says they are willing to settle for mediocre in the classroom and on the court. The winner of the CBI can claim themselves as the 98th best team in the country, and the biggest sellout. I imagine that recruits, boosters and fans would feel similarly.

If I were a four-star forward like Yancy Gates, who committed to the Bearcats, I would be embarrassed to know that my future school lost in the Big K or Dr. Thunder of collegiate tournaments.

As a U of L student, I would hope that my university would never exploit and embarrass the academic and athletic facets of the institution by competing in this farce of a tournament.