LastWord- In one of the most bizarre stories in college tennis–or college sports in general–the Arkansas Razorbacks women’s tennis team schedule Tennessee State six times on Sunday. It was a grueling full day of tennis, with the first match beginning at 8:00 AM and the final match concluding around 9:00 PM. Arkansas prevailed in all six, jumping their record on the season to 16-16 from 10-16. Reaching a .500 win percentage was extremely significant, as a team must be at least .500 to be selected to play in the 64-team NCAA tournament beginning on May 12th.
The primary reason Arkansas scheduled this unreasonable day of tennis was their incredible run of matches toward the end of the season. They finished the regular season an unimpressive 7-15, with a 3-10 mark in conference. However, this may not be as bad as it seems; they play in the SEC Conference, which boasts five of the top ten ranked teams in the country. They entered the postseason SEC tournament as the #11 seed out of 14 teams. Arkansas also finished the regular season strong, defeating #35 Tennessee in their final match. They proceeded to play by far their best tennis of the season at this point, winning three consecutive matches en route to the semifinal. The road to the semifinal included victories over #19 ranked Auburn and #7 ranked South Carolina. In the semifinal, they were able to put up a decent fight against #9 Florida, though they did not come out on top. Similar to the NCAA basketball tournament, the selection committee (at least unofficially) tends to have recency bias, with an emphasis on postseason tournament play. Arkansas likely felt that with these impressive wins to finish off their year, they would have a legitimate shot to play in the NCAA tournament. However, they still were only 10-16 on the season, and needed to get to .500 by Sunday, April 22nd, the last day of the season. It is difficult to tell what prompted this scheduling, or how it came to be. Arkansas was eliminated from the SEC tournament on April 20, and scheduled and played the first match soon after at 8:00 AM on April 22. They had to find a school nearby who could host Arkansas on short notice, and most importantly was willing to play six matches in a day and lose all of them. Most likely, money was the main factor. Sports such as college football and basketball bring huge revenues to universities, but smaller sports like tennis rarely charge for admission and generally operate at a loss. Tennessee State could have had a struggling program financially, and was offered a significant amount of money from Arkansas. This is not illegal, as large schools pay small schools to play them often in many different sports. It would also be a win-win for the schools, as Tennessee State’s women’s tennis program will be well funded, and Arkansas not only has a chance to make the tournament they believe they deserve, but will also make additional money from their postseason play. If money was the reason for this match-up, it makes sense from both sides and follows NCAA rules, though it may not be the right thing to do. Why did Arkansas have to travel to Tennessee to do this? Why not just host a nearby school? Well, the Arkansas athletic department has an odd rule. They view all smaller in-state schools as rivals that they refuse to support, so Arkansas won’t give them money by playing them. Because of this rule, which spans all sports, the Razorbacks had to travel to Nashville to face Tennessee State. --------- Here's the thing. It's impossible to hate on a women's tennis team for exploiting the most obvious of loopholes, because taking advantage of vulnerable parties that desperately need funding is so engrained into the fabric of the NCAA that it's billionaire executives might as well being laying their heads to rest under the comfort of a quilt made of profit-bearing technicalities. Sure, financially incentivizing a lesser school to schedule 1/5th of a season's worth of matches in a single day just prior to the deadline is an outrageous example of cheapening the hard work of countless others. There's no doubt that leveraging your way into the playoff bubble with money more so than merit theoretically compromises the integrity of college sports. Fortunately for the young, racquet-yielding ladies of Arkansas, you can't compromise integrity that's never actually existed in the first place. Which brings to light my only issue with this move. Seeing as it makes the NCAA look even more mind-numbingly stupid than they make themselves look and sets a dangerous precedent that would require them to put forth an actual effort to fix, isn't it fair to suspect that Arkansas wouldn't exactly be the apple of the selection committee's eye after trying to blatantly circumvent a broken system? Giving themselves the slightest of chances at a National Championship was certainly worth the old college try, especially with a pro-SEC bias potentially working in their favor. Still, this whole situation seems as though it's daring a dictatorial organization to stick too tightly to their own idiotic rules when they typically only do so to cause student athletes undeserved harm as opposed to offering them undeserved help. It's still worthy of a touché, but I'm skeptical as to whether it will be worthy of an invitation to the dance.
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