In the hours before the field for the NCAA Tournament was unveiled, two of the best conference championship games were those that mattered -- in Conference USA, where Houston surprised UTEP and earned an automatic berth, and in the Southeasern Conference, where Mississippi State lost a dramatic, one-point game in overtime to No. 2 Kentucky.
Those games were two of the best stories of the weekend.
In a weekend with almost wall-to-wall hype for the tournament, though, some necessary perspective was missing as everyone gladly jumped on the bandwagon of pre-tournament happiness.
First, critiques were missing, most notably of coaches. In one segment Saturday, an ESPN expert noted the strong freshmen class at Kentucky and credited coach John Calipari with putting together a solid class on short notice after getting the job last year. What should've been mentioned, and many fans know, is that Calipari pretty much just brought would would've been his class at Memphis with him to UK. So it's not like getting a strong class was a surprise.
Not as egregious, but certainly as interesting, was a mention of Louisville coach Rick Pitino during ESPN's solid "Outside the Lines" program. This week's edition of the show focused on former UK standout Winston Bennett and his battle with sexual addiction. At one point of the piece, it was noted that Pitino, who hired Bennett as an assistant with the Boston Celtics, warned and later fired Bennett when he found out about an indiscretion between Bennett and a student at Brandeis University, where the Celtics trained. After Pitino's well-reported peccadillo last year at Louisville, that matter years before just seemed ironic.
Back on the court, Mississippi State's almost-victory led to appropriate speculation about their resume as a tournament team. Was a one-point overtime loss enough to get them off the bubble, even with double-digit losses? It was worth discussion, but the ABC/ESPN crew let Calipari have an illogical last word on the matter.
"If we're the No. 2 team in the country, what are they?" Calipari asked while stating he did not believe his team deserved to win.
Mississippi Sate might benefit from Calipari's lobbying on its behalf, but if the Bulldogs do not get a berth to the NCAA Tournament, what that are/were (as a way of explaining their performance against UK) remains obvious to some. They were the SEC's defending tournament champion. They were an opponent that had played UK close in the regular season and knew them well. They were also a team that's should've won a few more regular season games (if they get shut out of the Big Dance).
Such illogical logic from coaches -- whether it's Calipari praising a fellow conference member or a coach such as Jay Wright lobbying for a larger field for the NCAA Tournament -- inevitably goes unquestioned by TV types, and one could just-as-logically argue that the coaches' arguments are somewhat self-serving, especially because what they support also enhances coaching security.
Finally, as the Mississippi State-Kentucky concluded, the first season of basketball under ESPN's $2 billion, 15-year agreement with the contract came to a close as well. It has been perhaps the most visible contract between a conference and a broadcast partner.
It was reached in August 2008 and the 2009-10 season was the first year of games broadcast under the deal.
What was most interesting about the deal was the clear relationship between ESPN and the SEC. That included a separate on-screen logo for basketball and football games televised by ABC/ESPN, and special mentions on the "Bottom Line" (that text that scrolls along the bottom of your TV screen on ESPN channels) about where SEC games could be found on TV if they were not being shown by the ESPN family.
But, and this is a big but, they still were on the ESPN family, as part of a sydicated package created by ESPN and called, The SEC Network.
So, while some the Big Ten Network represented an on-its-own effort by that conference, and while other conferences try to figure out the best possible widespread distribution for their athletic programming, the SEC got the benefit of a well-established partner that treated it quite well -- ESPN. And, after a successful year, the relationship mightonly get stronger in future years.