Who knew you needed a calculator to keep up with a college basketball tournament?
The Players Era Festival, featuring St. John’s and other heavyweights, is coming under fire for a convoluted system that has worked against several teams and confused fans and coaches alike.
A point differential system has resulted in No. 17 Tennessee only being in the third-place game, despite beating No. 3 Houston on Tuesday, while No. 15 Iowa State, which downed the 14th-ranked Johnnies on Monday, didn’t even qualify for the third-place game.
“Just put eight teams in a bracket and let them settle it with wins and losses over three days. This is too goofy for anybody to care about as currently constructed,” CBS Sports’ Gary Parrish posted to X on Tuesday night amid some of the confusion regarding the title game. “It’s just a bunch of good teams playing in whatever environments. But I don’t blame anybody for taking the money.”
The Players Era Festival is in its second year and is attempting to replace the Maui Invitational and other exempt multiple-team events as the premier early-season tournament.
The event is centered on rewarding teams with NIL funding, with the 18 teams involved averaging more than $1 million in compensation, according to CEO Seth Berger, as reported by ESPN.
The title game winner earns $1 million, the runner-up gets $500,000, the third-place finisher tallies $300,000 and the fourth-place team nets $200,000.
While that seems easy, understanding who qualifies for what games is anything but simple.
An 18-team field does not allow for a classic bracket, and the tournament is using a soccer-style system with point differential to determine which teams should be in which games, therefore presenting problems.
Not all matchups are created equal, and this format essentially punishes teams that beat good teams.
Tennessee beat Rutgers, 85-60, and then downed Houston, 76-73, which gave it a point differential of 23 since the single-game margin is capped at 20.
That win over Houston is the best victory any team has tallied in the tournament.
Gonzaga had a nice 10-point win over No. 8 Alabama, but then put the boots to an awful Maryland team, allowing it to finish with a plus-30 differential.
No. 7 Michigan routed San Diego State and No. 21 Auburn to have a plus-40 rating, and thus, Tennessee, despite playing the harder team, did not qualify for the title game.
Iowa State perhaps got the short end of the stick since it can’t compete for extra NIL.
The Cyclones are one of five 2-0 teams in the field, yet since they only — and we use only lightly there — beat the Johnnies by one and Creighton by 18, they missed the third-place cut by two points.
In a cruel twist of fate, Iowa State would have qualified, if not for the Dillon Mitchell last-second bucket that made it a one-point game and delighted those who bet on the Johnnies as 2.5-point underdogs.
Unranked Kansas instead will play for the extra money since it beat two mediocre, at best, ACC squads in Notre Dame and Syracuse by a combined 21 points.
Next year’s event is expanding to 32 teams, and Berger defended the system.
“How do we do something different so you’re not watching just the same thing you’ve been watching every November, just with more teams,” he said, per Sports Illustrated. “And so the system, over time, I think will be pretty simple and understandable to fans.
“In this format, every shot matters, every basket batters, every minute matters.”
Another issue is that the point system has created the waiting game for fans, coaches and players alike.
CBS reported how one coach texted him at 11 p.m. ET on Tuesday to see if the journalist knew which team his team would be playing the next day.
noti.group’s St. John’s beat reporter, Zach Braziller, only reported at 12:04 a.m. ET on Wednesday that St. John’s would be battling Auburn at 8 p.m. ET.
Other fan bases learned late how Baylor would face San Diego State at 10:30 p.m., and Maryland would clash with Alabama at midnight, unideal times for the day before Thanksgiving
“As someone literally in the arena at Player’s Era right now — this is my biggest gripe,” Fox’s Aaron Torres wrote in a quote tweet of Parrish’s remarks. “Fans will go to bed at midnight ET (Tuesday) — and have no idea who their team is playing, and at what time tomorrow.
“Hard to build momentum when simple things are this convoluted/confusing.”
[Notigroup Newsroom in collaboration with other media outlets, with information from the following sources]
