‘Player’s Era’ Sparks Debate on Why Fans Watch

If you go to a festival in Vegas, you can’t be frightened by the freakshow. 

Yesterday, as the second rendition of the Player’s Era Festival showcased some of the sports biggest brands in a semi-vacant Vegas arena, the college basketball internet world reached somewhat of an inflection point. 

The event served as a microcosm of the times. To many, it represents (whether fairly or unfairly), a reflection into the tide turned away from the pageantry and eccentricity loved by college ball fans and into the “soulless” seas of capitalists or gambling groups looking to squeeze dry said intricacies out. 

While many watched the formidable Feast week competitions, the tension continued to grow. X accounts small and big, burner and brave voiced their opinions on the event in waves. Curry Hicks Sage, host of popular mediums Burning Sage and SearchSZN, took to his usual Spaces post to field more moaning and maybe try to find some nuance on the issue while hundreds listened in. Some claimed “it’s great ball!” while others remained it was never about the ball to begin with. Old guard journalists planted their flag on the side of And-1 architect and tournament founder, Seth Berger, in some cases even telling fans to just simply “get used to it.”

It seems pretty clear that the issue is not with the event itself, although plenty to dissect in that regard, most notably the bizarre bracketless format, but with what the event actually represents. The sport sits as a shell of itself in pursuit of new order, chaos from a public reaction perspective spews through on a daily basis. 

Part of college basketball’s charm is that it often plays out like a parody. Fans revel in the weird moments, weird mascots, future pros and Nike execs packed the walls of insular high school gyms. Ask any Atlantic 10 fan what their favorite basketball moment of the last decade was and they’ll probably say when that kid walked out on the court dressed as a delivery courier with a bag of McDonalds and drink accompaniment during a Duquesne game. The parody now is of a different ilk. The parody now is how much more ridiculous is this going to get? How far are we going to go?

You can just pay guys directly to play for your school? Transfer as many times as you want?

Now we have G-League players cosplaying as high school seniors, narrowing down their “top 3” and posing in university uniforms? 

G-League players are the preferred workers in the new era. The style of play in the G-League is unsurprisingly individualistic. You can look at each “game” as more of a combine event, and each “teammate” as a stepping stone to outleap the other. Through interviews with a plethora of former Big 5 greats who stepped in the development league, most share the sentiment about how the league operates. Guys want theirs, and the win-loss column is a simple formality in many cases. It’s not necessarily the most compelling product to watch, is that what we want college basketball to become? I’m not sure. 

MY BIAS: 

I am not a fan of Kansas or Kentucky, either rival in Durham or Chapel Hill, or even my local powerhouse Villanova. I am but a sad little Hawk, digging my beak through the West Philadelphia mud for worms as I watch the apex predators of college basketball huddle up and pool resources (whether that be in the literal sense or the resource of opportunity for bids to March). The gap continues to radically grow between what I watch and root for and whatever this is. This is not the same game, and while it never necessarily was, at least maybe before there was the illusion that it was. That illusion that we were all in this together has been pulled away. There are the 32 teams that will compete in next year’s Player’s Era, then there is perhaps another slender layer of good filler, then there is my team and its constituents – not the Cinderellas – but the grotesque, undesirable ogres. I never had the thought in my head that my mid-major would win the National Championship, but now it feels like making the tournament alone is almost as improbable. 

So, as to surmise, you could say this event is not necessarily for people like me! But, maybe it is for the majority.

ON THE CONTRARY:

The level of hoop being hooped at the Player’s Era is very good. Not like never-before seen good, as big-time MTEs like Maui have always facilitated the highest anticipated matchups, but very high-level nonetheless. It’s fun to watch, and not just to degenerate gamblers like some purists may grumble. 

The irony in all of this debate and frustration is that, in all of this soul-sucking or corporatizing talk, the crux really is something that most sensible people have been calling for forever: player play. I can’t think of a single sound reason why you wouldn’t want college athletes to be paid appropriately for what they bring into our universities. Forever we have blamed the NCAA and the institutions within it, fairly claiming that they have safeguarded the profits. Now, the floodgates have opened, the wild west has ensued, and it really feels like we’re at a very specific point in time where this can go one way or the other, and most of us know which way that is. It’s so overt, over-the-top, and untraditional that it makes you question how you feel about the process of paying players, an idea that practically everyone should agree on.

I’m not sure if the Player’s Era is that turning point, or if it’s just the scapegoat that we use to get our frustrations out about the way things are turning.