It seemed to catch a lot of people off guard: The College Football Playoff first round was filled with blowouts. Maybe everyone underestimated just how important home-field advantage was in these huge games. Maybe, too, people expected NCAA Tournament-style chaos. We were reminded that basketball is not football. Older sports fans and journalists are well aware that in the old days — the 1980s and earlier decades — NCAA Tournament games were played in the home arenas or cities of specific teams, giving them a strong home-court advantage. Moreover, this applied to teams which were in some cases seeded lower than their opponents.
The NCAA Tournament was a growing entity in the 1970s and early 1980s. The event had not expanded to 64 teams just yet. That did not happen until 1985. The NCAA Tournament limited the size of its field to 25 teams through 1974 because it wanted only conference champions and independents in its field. It didn’t dawn on the NCAA to expand its tournament until the 1974 ACC Tournament produced a classic championship game in which the loser, a great Maryland team, wasn’t allowed to play in the NCAA Tournament. The event expanded to 32 teams in 1975, to 40 in 1979, and to 48 in 1980. The NCAA was slow to realize its event was growing in popularity, but it did appreciate the need to sell tickets. This is why teams got home games, even if they were the lower seed. Arenas got filled and raucous environments existed when March Madness began to take off as a treasured American sports showcase.
When we think about the College Football Playoff’s home-field dominance this past weekend, it’s good to point out that college basketball used to have real home-court advantage before teams were eventually prohibited from playing on home courts or in home cities. Here are several examples:
1984 MIDEAST REGIONAL FINAL
In a battle between a No. 1 and No. 2 seed, Kentucky got to host an Elite Eight game. Having a home crowd definitely helped Kentucky hold off Illinois in a tense, ferocious game and advance to the Final Four. Just imagine if this game had been in Champaign, not Lexington. It probably would have gone the other way.
1986 LSU TIGERS
LSU, coached by Dale Brown, was seeded 11th in 1986. Yet, the Tigers hosted first- and second-round games on campus. They won twice and then moved to the Sweet 16….
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