Whatever Happened to College Basketball's Christmas and Bowl Season Tournaments?
Among my earliest sports-watching memories is attending a Fiesta Bowl featuring the Arizona Wildcats against the Purdue Boilermakers — and before jumping on the Fiesta’s Wiki because that sounds like a preposterous matchup, please note that this was the basketball Fiesta Bowl.
Formally known as the Fiesta Bowl Classic, the four-team tournament held annually between Christmas and New Year’s became an event that, at its peak, was every bit as good as the Maui Invitational. Before dismissing this statement, consider that the 1987 installment featured a coaching foursome of legends Mike Krzyzewski, Jud Heathcote, Lon Kruger and Lute Olson.
The ‘87 Classic in particular has historical significance, as a Steve Kerr and Sean Elliott-led Arizona team vaulted to No. 1 in the AP Poll for the first time in program history on the strength of its wins against Michigan State and Duke. No less than sportswriting luminary Curry Kirkpatrick covered the event, which Sports Illustrated labeled “glamorous” and “grand.”
The same committee responsible for the Fiesta Bowl football game oversaw the basketball classic. The former was hardly in its infancy, but still relatively new at this point, having launched in 1971.
Initially debuting as an opportunity for the Western Athletic Conference champion to shine on the national stage, the very concept of the Fiesta Bowl was bonded with the Arizona schools specifically from the outset. The Fiesta Bowl Classic gave the committee a presence throughout the state — while for Tucson specifically, it added a hot-ticket hoops showcase in the burgeoning “Basketball Town” to go alongside its own postseason football game, the Copper Bowl1.
The Fiesta Bowl Classic dragged on in name into last decade, but its swan song as a meaningful event came in 1993 when Khalid Reeves hung 40 points on Jalen Rose and Co.
The Classic’s last gasp of relevance came in 2009 when Jimmermania ran wild on Tucson. Although memorable, Jimmer Fredette going off for a McKale Center record 49 points in a one-off represented little more than a garden-variety, non-conference game between regional opponents that happened to recycle the label.
Early-season tournaments diminishing in quality, and in some cases completely dying — like the Great Alaska Shootout — isn’t unique. However, the near-complete abandonment of the Christmas-season tournament in general and bowl-affiliated events in general ranks among the more peculiar developments that college basketball willingly embraced, to its own detriment, over the last two decades.
Reading John Gasaway’s book Miracles on the Hardwood — which comes HIGHLY recommended — inspired me to examine this phenomenon in a little bit more depth. Miracles mentions marquee tournaments played during the holidays in the mid-20th Century, namely the Sugar Bowl’s basketball event.
In 1974, La Salle beat then-No. 6-ranked Alabama in a nail-biter on Dec. 302, the day before and just miles away from the Superdome, where Nebraska clipped Florida in a defensive barnburner.
Fast-forward to 1981, and talented young center mistakenly labeled as Akeem earned the praises of LSU coaching legend Dale Brown — despite not making the Sugar Bowl All-Tournament Team.
Coaching heavyweights Guy Lewis and Dale Brown squaring off in a game that included the transcendent talent of Hakeem Olajuwon served as prelude to a classic Sugar Bowl with football coaching giants Jackie Sherrill and Vince Dooley.
Headlining Pitt’s 24-20 win was MVP Dan Marino, who accounted for the final touchdown of the night. The first came via Herschel Walker.
College basketball’s most regularly asked question in the present is how does one fix the sport — even when it’s only tangentially related to the topic at hand3. But the disappearance of such high-profile tournaments is one easy solution to generating more interest ahead of the meat of the regular season.
The vast majority of college basketball tournaments now are held either on Thanksgiving week or — yuck — earlier. While I love Feast Week, there’s simply too much basketball those five or six days to consume as much as I’d like.
What’s more, Thanksgiving weekend belongs primarily to college football with Rivalry Week. While bowl season takes over at Christmastime, game are played sporadically enough that college basketball has a prime window for attracting eyeballs before March that it’s leaving unoccupied.
Meanwhile, the disappearance of those classics associated with the bowls marks another step in the long — but in recent years, quickly accelerating — separation of football from the rest of major athletic departments rather than serving as the rising tide for other programs.
College basketball could benefit greatly from the return of bowl-affiliated events that bring in both the local fan base, and visitors in town for football. Beyond just restoring the expired classics, imagine the potential of a high-profile basketball tournament in Las Vegas — which has already become the unofficial epicenter of tournament season, both in November and March — built around the revamped Las Vegas Bowl.
Unfortunately, it’s a pipe dream I don’t expect to see addressed any time soon. Blame can go around to a variety of factors, perhaps most heavily on the unnecessary MTE rule implemented at the turn of the millennium. Blogging The Bracket’s Chris Dobbertean did about as thorough of a job as one can unpacking something so convoluted and asinine.
While the NCAA eased some of its more heavy-handed regulations on non-conference tournaments less than a decade later, the damage was done and scheduling habits had been crafted around the ridiculous MTE rules.
Shortly thereafter, the first wave of the realignment period in which I contend we’re still experiencing began. The shakeups of 2010 and expansion of conferences to membership numbers that make sense for football (in theory, at least) but not other sports created scheduling issues.
Most games played between Christmas and New Year’s these days are league games — and oftentimes, aren’t even conference openers. A holiday tournament can’t straight-up replace the dates that now occupy that point on the calendar; it requires moving conference games to an earlier date.
Considering the Big Ten started playing in-conference dates as early as Thanksgiving weekend in recent years, a hypothetical Christmastime tournament would force league play to start closer to Halloween.
Now that’s a terrifying thought.
The Copper Bowl was growing into a quality game in its own right, including functioning as a launching pad for Kansas State’s rise in the 1990s under Bill Snyder. Of no coincidence, at least in my opinion, the Copper Bowl moved to Tempe commensurate with the decline of the Fiesta Bowl Classic and became what’s now the “Guaranteed Rate Bowl.” If there isn’t a name more reflective of the bastardization of bowl season…
Reminder that the Sugar Bowl does not have the same historic connection to New Year’s Day as the Rose Bowl, and the former’s insistence of playing on Jan. 1 is an example of SEC brass bellyaching because another kid has a balloon.
Just before the pandemic, I pitched a story on the 1990 Loyola Marymount Elite Eight run to a prominent publication. After some back-and-forth, it was settled the story would only be of interest if tied into the modern NBA and what’s wrong with present-day college hoops. In hindsight, I’m glad the pitch was spiked.