Shootout rebounds after a scare in 2009

But the Shootout remains very much in survival mode in a college basketball world that gorges itself on so many preseason tournaments that Anchorage's 33-year-old Thanksgiving week tradition could starve to death because of a lack of teams.

A year ago, UAA was on the verge of canceling the once-preeminent men's tournament that annually pits the Division II Seawolves against an otherwise all-Division I field. Ultimately it wooed five Division I teams to town, down from the usual seven, and turned the tournament into a six-team event.

Eight teams are on board for next year too, said UAA athletic director Steve Cobb.

Neither this year's field nor next year's anticipated field compare to the tournaments of yesteryear, when defending national champions, top-25 teams and big-name players and coaches packed Sullivan Arena with fans. If there's a headliner this week, it's St. John's coach Steve Lavin, who left his gig as an ESPN analyst for a $9 million, six-year job trying to return the Red Storm to their glory days.

"The days of the monster fields like you and some others remember, those are not in our foreseeable future. The numbers are just not there," Cobb said. "The 2011 field, we don't have a top-25 team based on current rankings, but we have a field. And that's the story as far as we're concerned. It was very hard to get."

Working against the Shootout are a rule change made by the NCAA in 2006. The NCAA now extends to everyone a benefit once limited to tournaments in Alaska, Hawaii and Puerto Rico. The rule allows teams to play as many as four games at a preseason tournament while only counting one toward their season limit of 27.

For years one of just a few preseason tournaments, the Shootout is now one of five or six dozen. ESPN, the network that covered 22 Shootouts and paid rights fees that from 1996 to 2006 ranged from $60,000 to $100,000 a year, no longer comes to Alaska because it's got plenty of other tournaments to choose from -- including some it created and sponsors itself. So the Shootout, which will have eight games this week aired on Fox College Sports (GCI cable channel 301), competes for teams against tournaments that can promise major network coverage.

Then there are the teams that play nonconference home games during the preseason rather than travel to a tournament, because home games equal big gates -- meaning money.

"If people just constantly make dollar decisions -- Nebraska and Texas aren't going to be playing football on a regular basis anymore because of a decision made on dollars -- I'm not sure that's good for the sport," Cobb said. "It'd be like us making the decision we could save two grand by not playing Fairbanks. Playing Fairbanks means more to our state and our school than that."

In an interview last year with Basketball Times, retired coach Tom Penders, who brought teams from Texas and Houston to Anchorage, lamented the diminishment of the Shootout.

"This is the granddaddy tournament of them all," he said. "It was the highlight of your season. If you don't respect the past, it's wrong. I think there are a lot of coaches out there who are being selfish."

The same factors conspiring against the Shootout contributed to the demise of the Top of the World Classic in Fairbanks, where a 10-year run ended after the 2007 tournament. They forced a slimmed-down Shootout last year, and they could force more changes in the future.

"Everything about the Shootout is on the table," Cobb said.

Among the ideas that have been considered:

• Two four-team tournaments. Currently, just the women play a four-team tournament;

• A four-team men's tournament and an eight-team women's tournament, which would capitalize on the fact there are fewer preseason tournaments for women and therefore more women's teams available;

• Adding a fourth game for men's teams, one more than a traditional eight-team bracket provides. "We're looking at 2012 at trying to structure a fourth game," Cobb said. "There'd be a ton of ramifications but we're willing to look at it."

One change is already in place. Last season the school hired two independent contractors to look for tournament teams and sign them to contracts approved by UAA. Cobb said the contractors signed three of this year's teams and four of next year's teams.

"It's something we've never done in the past," he said. "These are guys who work in the college basketball world every day. It allowed us to get a bigger jump. Last year we were scrambling in August. Here we are in November and we've got 2011 signed and working on 2012 already."

Cobb believes at some point there will be a reduction in the number of preseason tournaments, maybe because the sport hits a saturation point or because a majority of NCAA member schools decide early- or mid-November is too soon for so many teams to miss class time in a season that goes deep into March.

Or they might revolt against, in what appears to be a growing trend, preseason tournaments that reward marquee teams whether they win or lose. Fueled by what TV wants, 12-team tournaments like Coaches vs. Cancer and the CBE Classic guarantee the semifinal spots to the four most glamorous teams -- schools like Duke, Kansas State, Pitt -- regardless of what happens in earlier round games.

"Our job is to hang in there and keep this tournament alive till the sanity returns," Cobb said.

Meanwhile, the Shootout continues to make money for UAA, although not nearly as much as it once did.

The 2008 tournament, won by San Diego State and featuring such teams as Seattle (which played in the same Division II conference as UAA the previous season and then made the jump to Division I) and Northern Illlinois, turned a profit of $157,485, according to UAA.

The 2003 tournament, won by Duke and featuring such teams as Purdue and Seton Hall, made $575,242 and ranks as the most profitable tournament on record.

"In the last several years, our expenses are up and our revenue is down," Cobb said. "We lost ESPN, we had to up our guarantees (paid to visiting teams), we saw the effect of the economy and we lost some (fans) who don't think the fields are what they were in the '80s, and they're not -- we don't have fields like that anymore."

The Shootout doesn't contribute as much as it once did to the athletic department's annual budget -- now at $8.1 million -- but it's still of great importance. The Shootout is a big attraction to some of the department's corporate sponsors and it remains a big part of the school's -- and even Alaska's -- identity.

"You go Outside, the first word you hear is either Iditarod or Shootout," Cobb said. "So if it ever became a break-even proposition, it would still be a win for UAA. So far we haven't gotten to that, and I hope we don't."

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Find Beth Bragg online at adn.com/contact/bbragg or call 257-4335.