Big Ten considers December games

And now for the biggest, or at least most intriguing, bit of basketball-related news to emerge from the Big Ten spring meetings: The B1G is considering moving its early-season conference games -- which usually begin just after Jan. 1 -- up the calendar into December.

The hope, according to Michigan State athletic director Mark Hollis, is to find a way to make the December hoops doldrums something more engaging and worth following for the swath of college football fans stuck with too much pre-bowl downtime. From AnnArbor.com:

Playing earlier conference games could increase exposure for Big Ten basketball in a dead period between football conference championship games and the start of the almost month-long bowl season. “That’s what they are looking at,” Michigan State athletic director�Mark Hollis said Wednesday at the�Big Ten spring meetings. “How do you take things out of the bowl window and move them around a little bit?”

As any college sports fan knows, Decembers are sort of a bummer. Students leave campus for winter vacation. Bowl teams wait a month or more for their final game of the season. Hoops teams frequently schedule guarantee games against lowly opponents rather than meet a worthy foe without the help home court gusto from students and otherwise-occupied fans. With the exception of a few holiday tournaments and the like, it's a pretty dead month.

College basketball doesn't need dead months. It's already fighting an uphill battle against the exposure and popularity of the NFL, NBA and college football; leaving a window in the heart of the season doesn't seem like a very good idea. If this puts more entertaining basketball on the docket during December, well, full speed ahead.

Source: http://espn.go.com/blog/collegebasketballnation/post/_/id/31203/big-ten-considers-december-games

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