While all eyes generally fall on the NCAA Men’s Basketball Tournament this time of year, a number of other NCAA championships are being contested during the months of March and April. Some collegiate sports, like wrestling and ice hockey, have developed cult-like followings and sizeable television audiences in recent years.
Unfortunately, these championships are likely stunted from an audience-maximization perspective because they often compete directly with the men’s basketball tournament. However, shifting the schedule might allow them to blossom into more significant viewership events.
Wrestling and ice hockey are the most obvious candidates for this treatment. Still, despite the product’s already-built popularity, the women’s basketball tournament should consider it as well.
In this column, we’ll examine how all four of these winter championships—wrestling, men’s and women’s ice hockey, and women’s basketball—could strategically shift their schedules to attract larger television audiences.
As with all NCAA championship events except men’s basketball, ESPN is the exclusive broadcast partner. Last year, it re-upped a media rights deal with the NCAA for $115 million annually.
The very fact that ESPN holds rights to all of the NCAA’s championship events outside of men’s basketball creates a scheduling nightmare during March and April, when 14 separate Division I sports compete for a national title. Conflicts are unavoidable, but they can certainly be optimized to avoid competing with the most popular events and reach a wider audience.
So without further ado, let’s get to the changes.
Wrestling
This year’s NCAA Wrestling Championships took place over three days from Thursday, March 20, to Saturday, March 22. Wrestling is quite possibly the most egregious scheduling blunder of all NCAA championship events. The three days on which the Championships are contested align with the first three days of the men’s basketball tournament.
Of course, the first two rounds of the men’s basketball tournament take all of the oxygen out of the sports world. Games start just after noon EST and don’t end until midnight EST.
Wrestling currently schedules two sessions on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, coinciding with the beginning of March Madness. One session begins at noon EST and airs on ESPNU, while the other begins in the evening and airs on either ESPN or ESPN2.
This season, none of the telecasts on ESPNU eclipsed 100,000 viewers during the afternoon session. However, some evening sessions put up respectable audiences considering the competition. Thursday’s primetime audience averaged 216,000 viewers for second-round coverage on ESPN. Friday’s primetime semifinals coverage on ESPN2 averaged 331,000 viewers. And Saturday’s championship round drew 703,000 viewers at 7 p.m. ET on ESPN.
Of course, all of these windows were directly competing with the men’s basketball tournament, while Friday and Saturday also competed with the women’s basketball tournament.
The solution here seems pretty simple: Move the NCAA Wrestling Championships up to begin on Monday and end on Wednesday. That way, the only men’s basketball games the event will compete with are the First Four, and direct competition with the first round will be avoided entirely.
It seems simple enough. Those new windows will be much more likely to attract a casual viewer without competition from basketball.
As you might imagine, these Mondays, Tuesdays, and Wednesdays in March will become an ongoing theme during this post. Yes, it’s a bit more painful for fans looking to attend in person, as it would be scheduled for three weekdays, but the setup already involves two weekdays. It’s a bit more inconvenient for those attending, but it has a lot of upsides in terms of the total television audience and growing the sport.
Men’s Ice Hockey
Moving on to the NCAA Men’s Hockey Tournament, this competition will focus on maximizing its earlier rounds. The tournament’s first round began Thursday, March 27, and the championship will be played on Saturday, April 12. The first two rounds coincide with the Sweet 16 and Elite Eight rounds of the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments and, as such, much of the inventory is relegated to ESPNU, ESPN+, or ESPN2 in the best-case scenario.
One possibility to improve the men’s hockey tournament schedule is to shift the start of the tournament back one week. There is already a one-week gap between the first and second rounds and the Frozen Four. But if the tournament started one week later, which would be Thursday, April 3, this year, the first and second rounds would almost entirely avoid the men’s basketball tournament, aside from direct competition with the Final Four on Saturday night.
The obvious downside of this option is competing directly with the Final Four and the championship in the women’s basketball tournament on Friday and Sunday. Though another obvious point, there are fewer basketball games to compete with when only four teams are remaining, and the hockey tournament can take advantage of the windows where basketball is not being played on those days.
This option also allows the Frozen Four to remain in its usual place on the calendar, where there’s not much competition outside of The Masters (which has minimal overlap due to the hockey games being played in the evening anyway).
Women’s Ice Hockey
The NCAA Women’s Hockey Tournament is another one where, if the event shifted away from college basketball, it’d likely get much better television exposure.
This year, the women’s hockey tournament played its Frozen Four on Friday, March 21, and its championship on Sunday, March 23. Those games competed directly with the men’s and women’s college basketball tournaments, leaving no room to showcase the event on ESPN’s linear channels.
Friday’s semifinals were both relegated to ESPN+ due to the packed schedule on ESPN’s linear networks during the women’s college basketball tournament, while the championship game was hidden away on ESPNU at 4 p.m. ET on Sunday afternoon.
A simple move would be to shift the Frozen Four and championship games to Monday and Wednesday, respectively. This way, ESPN would likely find room on a linear network for the semifinal matches, and the championship match would likely earn itself a better time slot.
Women’s Basketball
Perhaps the most controversial change the NCAA could make to its championship schedule would be shifting the NCAA Women’s Basketball Tournament. Right now, the women’s basketball tournament is staggered one day off from the men’s tournament, beginning first-round play on Friday and ending second-round play on Monday. This means there are three days of overlap between the men’s and women’s basketball tournaments for each of the first two weekends of play.
Given the growing popularity of women’s college basketball, that should change. A more optimal schedule may look something like this:
- First round on Monday and Tuesday immediately following the men’s Selection Sunday (March 17 and 18 this year)
- Second round on Monday and Tuesday following the conclusion of the men’s second round (March 24 and 25)
- Everything else remains the same (Sweet 16, March 28 and 29. Elite Eight, March 30 and 31. Final Four, April 4. Championship, April 6.)
To make this happen, some structural changes to the tournament would have to be made. For one, the No. 1 through No. 4 seeds would only be guaranteed hosts for the first-round games. In the event that any of the No. 1 through No. 4 seeds lose in the first round, the best remaining seed will host the second-round games. Secondly, a few smaller conferences would have to shift their conference tournaments earlier to accommodate an earlier start to the Big Dance.
Under this structure, the first two rounds of the women’s tournament would air virtually unopposed, allowing the event to capture the full attention of basketball fans. No doubt, a sizeable March Madness-crazed audience neglects the women’s tournament in the earlier rounds in favor of the men’s competition. This schedule would draw in these fans and spotlight the women’s game.
The main downside to this schedule is sacrificing two weekend windows. Usually, the second day of the first round and the first day of the second round are played on Saturday and Sunday. This wouldn’t happen under the new structure, but the tradeoff is not having to compete with the men’s tournament, sans one First Four game.
While it may feel a bit awkward at first and would likely be controversial among some traditionalists, this type of scheduling could potentially supercharge the women’s tournament every year by giving it a head start on the men’s tournament.
No matter how you feel about some (or all) of these proposed changes, there’s a lot of low-hanging fruit that the NCAA can use from a scheduling perspective to optimize its championships. Some are more drastic than others, but all would likely help attract more viewers to the NCAA’s winter sports portfolio.
At the end of the day, as college sports simply become a vehicle to deliver the largest television audiences possible, it’s time to consider what more can be done to attract those eyeballs.
