Columnist Dean Juipe: NBA, NCAA do disservices to their fans

Dean Juipe

Wednesday, May 1, 2002 | 9:55 a.m.

Dean Juipe's column appears Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday and Friday. His boxing notebook appears Thursday. Reach him at juipe@lasvegassun.com or (702) 259-4084.

For anyone interested in streamlining sports, the news on two fronts sounds terrible.

The National Basketball Association wants to extend its playoff format to provide for additional games, and the National Collegiate Athletic Association is going to add three postseason football bowl games.

Can things get any worse?

This is clearly a case where more is less. More games may equal more money for the teams and schools involved, yet they further devalue and lessen the importance of the games already on the schedule.

It's another in a series of moves made by a number of leagues and associations that point us in this direction: Someday results from the regular season will be so meaningless that every team in every league will be rewarded with a playoff berth.

The NCAA is the latest offender.

As if 25 bowl games after the most recent regular season weren't enough, an additional three are apt to be approved by the organization's football certification subcommittee at its meetings this week in San Antonio. At 28, there will be so many bowl games that nearly half of the Division I-A schools in the country will be required to take part.

The catch is that by a new NCAA rule, teams appearing in a bowl game must have a .500 record. I'll go on record right now saying the NCAA may have to offer exceptions, as it's not only theoretically possible but likely that a time will come when half of the I-A teams won't finish a given season with a .500 record.

Of course 28, like 25 before it, is just a stopover point, especially given that at least two other communities are gearing up to request bowl games following the 2003 season. (Charlotte, San Francisco and Honolulu are the front runners to land new bowls this coming season, with two other Hawaiian sites awaiting approval down the road.)

At some point, the fans' collective gullibility should come into question. If almost every team is in a bowl game, won't a school's supporters find a diminished importance in traveling to a bowl each and every year?

Won't games that once drew 40,000 be susceptible to a loss of interest that will be reflected at the gate?

I suspect the NCAA hasn't thought that far ahead.

And I suspect the NBA isn't listening to its fans even today.

For reasons that can only be associated with adding to the bottom line, next season the first round of the NBA playoffs will probably switch from their current (and sufficient) best-of-five format to a best-of-seven marathon. As if five games were not enough to determine it's a mismatch having the Lakers play Portland and that five weren't enough to weed out imposters such as Minnesota and Seattle, fans will be asked to pony up for a couple more games they could easily do without.

Abbreviated regular seasons and playoffs, where the outcomes of the games are pertinent and crucial, is simply asking too much in this day and age of luxury suites and massive overhead expenses. But do we have to be burdened with still more playoff teams and still more playoff games?

Can't someone in a position of authority stand up and say "that's enough?"