NCAA Basketball: Should the season be more spread out?

Think to yourself how hard being a college basketball player is. You are 18 to 21 years old. You drive or fly back from an away game and get back to your dorm and you finish your projects and homework.

You go to bed and then wake up at 7:00 am to get to classes the very next morning. Also don't forget, you have pre-practice at 2:15 pm, practice from 2:30 pm to 4:30 pm, and film session from 4:45 pm to 5:15 pm.

Then you go straight to dinner for an hour-long break before a mandatory study hall for two hours. Don't forget, you have to do it again with two to five days for the next away game.

That's a lot of pressure for these young kids.

Now let's look at what the Big Ten conference did this past season and see if they tried to make the season easier on the players. Here is what The Blade has to say about the matter.

“Each team will play twice — one home game and one road game — with one day off in between. Teams will play on Friday-Sunday, Saturday-Monday, or Sunday-Tuesday, a plan that was hatched by coaches and approved by athletic directors.”

In my opinion, this just doesn't give the players a break. The only reason why the conference officials are cramming the season together so much is because they wanted to play the Big Ten conference tournament at Madison Square Garden.

The arena is booked the next week, which is when the Big Ten conference tournament usually is, for the Big East conference tournament.

But there is a question that I have: why rush the players so much when they easily could have booked the tournament the same week as everyone else at Bankers Life Fieldhouse in Indianapolis, Indiana or at United Center in Chicago, Illinois, two locations at which the tournament has been held before?

Another reason that the college basketball season should be more spread out is because the players will not play as well as if they had proper rest. If you look at all of the back-to-back games in the NCAA, the people who pay to watch these games don't get to see these teams to play at their very full potential. It is a waste of money to not get to see the players perform at their expected level.

So as you can see, having these players play back-to-back games or games that are just days apart is very hard on them. It can affect their studying, grades and school work, and it largely affects the level at which they are playing so people don't get to their favorite players play at full potential.