Before we dive too deep into this article, first the CBS Sports Classic deserves to be canceled based on the hideous court design alone.  Good grief.

The Puerto Rico Tip Off, 2K Sports Classic, Paradise Jam, Battle 4 Atlantis, Maui Invitational, CBE Hall of Fame Classic, Coaches vs Cancer, NIT Season Tip Off, Wooden Legacy, Las Vegas Invitational, Champions Classic, Jimmy V Classic, Izod Center Showcase….

These are just a few of the dozens and dozens of early season college basketball tournaments and classics that exist in the sport.  Over the past several years, the proliferation of these showcase events have exploded across the country.  Teams travel to neutral site locations to play on a national platform in marquee early season games.  With the regular season not that valuable in college basketball, these non-conference matchups are able to add a bit of prestige and meaning to the early months of the campaign and are valuable exposure for national audiences and recruiting.

The CBS Sports Classic in Chicago is another made-for-TV early season college basketball tournament (obviously, because it’s sponsored by CBS) featuring four major programs.  Ohio State vs North Carolina and UCLA vs Kentucky makes for a great doubleheader.

But these early season tournaments have grown so much that they’ve become a point of contention for college basketball fans – all the good early season games are now being played off campus in strange and exotic locations.  The best games are being taken away from fans on campus, and that’s something that needs to be addressed.  Gary Parrish of CBSSports.com agrees with this sentiment… except when it comes to the tournament put on by his employer.

In a column entitled “CBS Sports Classic is a rare example of when a neutral court is OK” Parrish toes the company line like you’ll rarely ever see…

I have always preferred, and still do prefer, college basketball games played on college campuses. But the desire of too many coaches to spend part of their non-league schedules competing in events played on neutral courts has diminished the number of such games.

Perfect, this is just what we’ve been talking about…

33.5 percent of non-league games between NCAA Tournament teams the past four seasons were played on neutral courts. That’s basically one out of every three.

Again, that’s too many for my liking, if only because every interesting non-league game played on a neutral court is one less interesting non-league game we get on a college campus with a big band, rowdy student section and the type of atmosphere, in general, that often makes college basketball great. Truth be told, this sport will never match the NBA in quality of play or star-power. But where this sport has an advantage over that sport is in its ability to create unique and memorable homecourt advantages, like the ones you’ve seen at Cameron Indoor Stadium, Allen Fieldhouse, the Kohl Center, the McCarthey Athletic Center and countless other on-campus facilities.

We’re definitely on the same page so far.  Those temples of college basketball all have a lot better atmosphere than Imperial Arena in Atlantis with its blue lights trying to showcase basketball as though it were being played underwater, which is not how I think Mr. Naismith intended it.

Let’s take #12 Ohio State for instance, their early season schedule has featured two top games at Louisville in the Big Ten-ACC Challenge and this neutral site game against North Carolina.  The home schedule in Columbus?  It’s littered with the following schools: North Carolina A&T, Colgate, High Point, James Madison, Campbell, and Sacred Heart.  Even some of those games were a part of the manufactured “Buckeye Classic.”  And yes, season ticket holders pay real money to attend all these games.

So far so good…

But if college basketball must have interesting non-league games on neutral courts — and it’s clear, for a variety of reasons, that college basketball must have interesting non-league games on neutral courts — the way to do it is the way it’s being done this weekend.

You mean how your employer is doing it this weekend?  What a coincidence that the CBS Sports college basketball writer has come to the totally independent and well-reasoned conclusion that the CBS Sports Classic is the one that gets it right!  Praise be to Les Moonves and Sean McManus!

Get four big-name programs.

Throw them under one roof.

Play a doubleheader.

“We’re going to be on the biggest stage in college basketball to this point in the season,” said Ohio State coach Thad Matta. “You’ve got four great programs. … We’re excited.”

The CBS Sports Classic is Saturday at the United Center.

Ohio State vs. North Carolina is the first game.

Kentucky vs. UCLA is the second.

Whoa man.

That’s a lot of one sentence paragraphs.

Seriously.

Dude.

Parrish has the gall to hail the virtue of his company’s tournament while blaming other tournaments/classics for doing the exact same thing the CBS Sports Classic does.

Simply put, this is something that wouldn’t be possible on a campus. Consequently, this is the only scenario where a neutral-court event trumps an on-campus showdown, i.e., when the neutral-court event provides something a normal on-campus game cannot.

Duke vs. Connecticut in New Jersey?

Whatever.

I’d rather see that inside Cameron or Gampel.

I mean, I understand why Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski and Connecticut’s Kevin Ollie might want to play at the Izod Center; a game eight miles from New York City has its advantages, and it is true that coaches sometimes prefer neutral-court games because they most closely simulate NCAA Tournament games. I get it. I totally get it. But, purely from a spectator’s perspective, that’s a game that’s way more interesting in Durham or Storrs because, you know, it’s just a game.

Aren’t all of these games just a game?  We’re going down the philosophical rabbit hole here, but isn’t the original point of this column that these games are being taken away from fans on campus?  That’s still true since these games are being played in Chicago no matter how many games are being played that day.  The doubleheader is great for the network and the media covering the game, but the fans on campus are still losing out.  That’s the cause you’re championing here!

North Carolina played appetizing games against Butler, UCLA, and Florida… in the Bahamas.  They play Ohio State in Chicago.  In Chapel Hill they’ve hosted the likes of East Carolina, Robert Morris, and North Carolina Central.  What’s to stop UNC-OSU from taking place in Chapel Hill and UCLA-Kentucky from playing in Lexington?

Purely from a spectator’s perspective, you lose all of the great things about being on a college campus while gaining very little.

Exactly.

But what’s happening in Chicago is different.

Huh?  Are we sure two different people didn’t write this column?

So the only time when neutral-court events are passable are when they’re doubleheaders played in the big city.  Oooook.  Parrish throws a bone to ESPN’s Champions Classic, which follows the same format, to qualify this as a basketball column instead of a CBS Sports press release.  But again, it belies the entire purpose of his original thesis.

We’re still facing the fundamental issue raised in the first part of this column of the best games being played off campus.  It doesn’t matter if it’s a singleheader, tripleheader, or quintupleheader.  If we’re going by this logic, wouldn’t Maui or Atlantis be superior to the CBS Sports Classic because you have even more great teams and talent under the same roof?  Not according to CBSSports.com.  Let’s be honest, this is native advertising under the guise of a basketball column.