Will Football Kill The Basketball Conference?

LOS ANGELES — “Who does he think he is, Nick Saban?”

With 1.2 seconds remaining and Alabama holding a slim lead in its Sweet 16 win over North Carolina, Crimson Tide coach Nate Oats came from a timeout with his team in an unorthodox out-of-bounds look that prompted the obvious but appropriate joke from a friend who was next to me in the Crypto.com Arena press seating.

The set, in which all five Alabama players lined up parallel across the baseline, looked like a football spread formation. This came not long after I’d chalked the Tide allowing 54 first-half to Alabama defenses never being the same since Kirby Smart left his post as coordinator to be head coach at Georgia.

References to football are unavoidable here, given the West Regional will send one of two Football Schools to its first-ever Final Four.

Alabama’s 89-87 defeat of North Carolina and Clemson’s 77-72 win earlier over Arizona sends each victor to just the second Elite Eight in program history.

Clemson’s trip to the West Regional final marks the Tigers’ first time surviving to the Round of 8 since the NCAA Tournament expanded to 64-plus teams. They last advanced this far in 1980, losing to UCLA.

But even had the Alabama and Clemson basketball teams that share athletic departments with dominant football programs lost to their hoops-mad, history-rich counterparts, the gridiron already encroached on the hardwood in Los Angeles.