Anyone here know how to shoot?

After suffering through last night's almost-unwatchable NCAA basketball championship game (an unworthy closing argument to what had been a fantastic tournament), I'm willing to add fuel to the fire of an old debate--should we really be playing our most important games in different circumstances than all the rest? In this case, the question is whether playing the Final Four in giant football stadiums is harming the product on the court during the sport's biggest showcase.

Walking into a football stadium and seeing 75,000 people in one place for a basketball game is an impressive sight. With such a large mass of humanity in one place, a collective energy pervades the building and immediately signals to all who are in attendance that an important event is about to take place. From an aesthetic standpoint, it makes the Final Four a tremendous experience.

However as Monday night showed us once again, the football stadium Final Four all too often also produces horrific basketball. The numbers from UConn’s 53-41 victory over Butler suggest it was the worst offensive game in Final Four history. Butler shot 18.8 percent from the field, the lowest percentage of any team in any championship game in tournament history. It was also the lowest shooting percentage of any team in this year’s tournament, obliterating the futility record set by St. Peter’s in shooting 29 percent versus Purdue. UConn may have won the game, but it too contributed to the string of horrendous bricks, going 1-11 from the three point line and becoming the first team to win an NCAA title shooting less than 10 percent from behind the arc.

But the awful shooting didn’t start on Monday. In the Kentucky-UConn game on Saturday night, the Huskies went 1-12 from three point land and won, leading to a preposterous 2-23 total for the weekend. Kentucky shot only 33 percent from the field for the game and went 2-12 from three point land in the first half, even though virtually every one of the looks was completely wide open. In fact, the entire Final Four was one consistent parade of missed open three pointers, leading to a brand of eye-bleeding basketball that does little to sell the college game while played on its biggest stage.

Our author continues,

Believe me, I understand the reason these games are played in such massive structures. With 75,000 fans on Saturday and another 70,000 on Monday, the NCAA set a new attendance record for the Final Four and produced not only a large stream of revenue, but also an atmosphere to compete with the biggest sporting events in the United States. So arguing that the NCAA should go back to something resembling a regular arena for the Final Four is unrealistic and akin to arguing that “student-athletes” should miss less class during March.

However we should acknowledge that what we see at the Final Four is not the same game that is played throughout the regular season or in the early rounds of the NCAA tournament. A game in a football stadium leads to a shooting environment that is unlike anything a player will otherwise see. Behind the basket is simply open space, often filled with temporary stands that dont raise immediately as in virtually every arena in America. With no real backdrop to create a context, the basketball goal seems to almost be floating in space. This will often cause even a great shooter to have issues with depth perception that in many cases, he has never previously seen.

To understand exactly what is occurring, imagine standing in a desert, with no trees, mountains or buildings to help your eyes and brain conceptualize how far a particular object is from you at a given point. Absent the context around you, one is generally guessing to determine distances from a given point, an effect that is exaggerated to an even greater degree in a split-second situation. This occurs on a much smaller level in these football environments, often interfering with the regular routine of a shooter who is used to a regular context in the average basketball arena. Add the additional oddity of a raised court that hovers over the fans in the first couple of rows, and the difference from the players’ norm is real.

I don't normally excerpt other articles this heavily, but this piece does a particularly fantastic job of laying out the argument in the same way I would. To be fair, the empirical evidence to support the "anti-football stadium" argument is spotty at best, in large part because there are so few games played in such settings, making any fair comparison almost impossible.

But from a fan standpoint, it's always distasteful when the business side of the game starts to impact the product on the field (or the court, as the case may be). I first wrote about this dynamic with respect to TV's ever-growing influence on the baseball playoffs (which, to me, are sacred), and there is no shortage of examples these days.

As fans, we expect and accept that the franchises, leagues, and players we love do not operate in a business vacuum, and sometimes must make revenue-maximizing choices that seem unpalatable to us on the outside. We know by now that we are "rooting for laundry" as they say, and that loyalty, etc. is in short supply. But there is a certain point at which supposedly "revenue-maximizing" decisions begin to impact and compromise the integrity of the product--at this point, what might look like revenue maximization in the short run can turn into a huge long-term mistake.

Eventually, if the product sucks, (and last night's game sucked in a BIG way), you can't sell it to anyone for any price. In the short run, before people notice that the product is starting to fall apart, you can get away with quite a bit and look like a business genius. This isn't a dynamic that's unique to sports, or any business; rather, it's universal. Cut corners on safety inspections, save money, make more profit, look like a genius... until the whole thing blows up and you end up wondering what went wrong.

Maybe it's a bit overblown to compare the NCAA to BP, but it's quite possible that last night's debacle was no accident. The apathy with which the world regarded last October's World Series was entirely of MLB's doing, all the result of supposedly revenue-maximizing decisions. A couple more title games like last night's disaster, and people will start to tune out the Final Four, too. If the only thing keeping people interested in your product is widespread semi-legal nationwide gambling on teenagers... then you might want to reconsider a couple of things.

I don't think the roof is caving in on the NCAA just yet, but it was hard to stay up and watch last night's game (oh yeah, I forgot to mention the post-9pm EST start time thanks to TV, making it hard for young kids to stay up and watch, and you know what just nevermind...) and think that it was worthwhile. Sooner or later, I'll tune out, and that's bad news for the NCAA.

[CBS Sports]