Hlas: Fear is a powerful thing. Relegation can make Big Ten men’s basketball great again

We all have secrets, but some can eat us alive.

To free my soul, I’m confessing something I did Wednesday night and hope you can find it in your heart to somehow understand.

I listened to the second half of the Rutgers-Washington men’s basketball game on satellite radio as I drove home after covering the Oregion-Iowa men’s basketball game.

I hear you asking. Why, man, why? I could fib and say I was trying to learn things about Washington, since its next game was at Iowa three days later. Alas, my motive was darker, to the brink of madness.

Namely, I was curious about a battle of two teams trying to avoid finishing among the bottom three spots in the Big Ten standings.

The 16th-, 17th- and 18th-place teams won’t get to go to Indianapolis for the conference tournament. The teams that finish 10th through 15th will advance to Indy for the right to try to win five games in five days to become the league’s champion.

Connecticut did that in the 2011 Big East tournament, so it isn’t impossible. It is, however, the next closest thing.

Rutgers beat Washington in overtime, moving the Scarlet Knights above Iowa in the Big Ten for three days. The Hawkeyes beat Washington Saturday to move one game ahead of 16th-place Northwestern.

That prologue was the long way of getting to the point. Which is this: Men’s basketball feels like it’s flatlined in recent years. Everyone who likes basketball enjoys the NCAA tournament, but the regular-season feels like a long and barely meaningful slog to many.

By adding four teams before this season, the Big Ten only made things harder to embrace. Everyone plays 14 teams just once, and only three teams twice. Iowa played Oregon and Washington at home, but not Illinois? Preposterous.

The bloated Big Ten is here to stay, though, so here’s how it can make the regular-season a lot more interesting: Relegation and promotion.

Don’t just keep the bottom three teams out of the league tournament. Banish them to mid-major conferences and promote the regular-season champions of those leagues.

Not the conference-tournament winners, mind you. We want to reward those who perform best over the long haul.

I suggest the Mid-American, Missouri Valley and West Coast conferences as the Big Ten’s partners for this. How the sharing of television money would work, I couldn’t care less. We’re thinking big-picture here.

How much fear and loathing would there be with the fan base of a faltering Big Ten this late in the season if its team were in danger of falling out of the conference?

How much excitement and euphoria would there be with MAC, MVC and WCC fan bases, and basketball fans in general? Wouldn’t you watch an Akron-Toledo game in early March if it were to determine a spot in the Big Ten next season?

How big would today’s Drake-Northern Iowa game in Cedar Falls be? It’s already pretty spicy, with Valley-leading Drake at 14-3 and UNI second at 13-4.

Promotion/relegation is the system used in European soccer, and a darn fine system it has been. It makes every game count even if you’re way down the tables, as the Brits call the standings.

In England’s Premier League, the bottom three teams are booted down a division while the top two teams and the winner of a four-team playoff involving the third- through sixth-place clubs come up from the second level.

What kind of fun would it be for a Drake or UNI to go through a Big Ten season, fighting to stay in the league for a second year while packing its own arena every game and getting on television for an entire winter?

What kind of fun would it be for a Nebraska or Minnesota (or, gulp, Iowa) to be sent packing to the MAC, trying to win their way out of exile and back to the Big Ten?

OK, it might not be especially fun for the relegated. Too bad. You can’t make an omelet without breaking a few eggs, and you could still afford a dozen eggs if you win enough games to avoid relegation.

What all this has to do with higher education is for the university presidents to address. My work is done here.

Comments: (319) 398-8440; mike.hlas@thegazette.com