This weekend, San Antonio is going to party like it’s 2008.
For the first time in 17 years and just the second time in NCAA Tournament history, all four men’s No. 1 seeds are Final Four-bound. Auburn, Duke, Houston and Florida are set to square off in San Antonio’s historic Alamodome. A site truly worthy of the occasion for more reasons than one.
In a bit of spectacular irony, that forever memorable Final Four in 2008 just so happened to be at the Alamodome as well. Things are a little bit different, in the world and in college basketball, than they were when North Carolina, Kansas, Memphis and UCLA descended on the Riverwalk almost two decades ago.
Blue Bloods vs. New Bloods
This year’s edition features one traditional blue blood and three rising programs that have been aptly titled as “New Bloods”. In 2008, it was essentially the polar opposite. You had one rising program in John Calipari’s Memphis crew, but the other three one-seeds were arguably the three most historically significant brands in college basketball.
Don’t mistake brand name for quality, though. When diving into the ever-trustworthy KenPom metrics, you’ll quickly find that all four teams in this year’s Final Four have a higher adjusted rating than each of the four teams that made it in 2008.
Not just that, each of this year’s participants currently ranks in the top 10 all-time in KenPom’s metric system, higher than 26 of the last 28 national champions. Only 2001 Duke and 2024 UConn would stack comparably to this Final Four in terms of a direct comparison with any of the remaining teams.
Name Brand Stars
One advantage the 2008 Final Four did have was starpower. We already mentioned the jackpot the NCAA hit with three of their biggest brands making the final weekend, but that weekend also had a litany of established college stars that only Cooper Flagg could rival in notoriety this season. We’re talking Tyler Hansborough on North Carolina. We’re talking Derrick Rose and Chris Douglas-Roberts on Memphis. Kevin Love on UCLA.
Hell, Mario Chalmers didn’t enter the Alamodome in 2008 as a name-brand superstar like some of his opponents. He sure as hell left as one, though.
2008 will also almost certainly walk away with the advantage in television viewership. The 2008 National Championship between Kansas and Memphis had a Nielsen Rating of 12.2 with 19.501 million live television viewers. Kansas vs. USC in the semifinals had a Nielsen rating of 8.8 with 14.35 million viewers, while Memphis vs. UCLA had a 7.2 Nielsen rating with 11.70 million viewers.
For context, only one Final Four game has reached above an 8.6 Nielsen rating since 2020. That was the 2021 title game between Baylor and Gonzaga.
Blast From The Past
This year’s Final Four and National Championship game will be contested on Saturday, April 5 and Monday, April 5. Exactly 17 years to the respective dates that the Final Four and National Championship games were contested in 2008.
The No. 1 song on the Billboard Hot 100 the week of April 5, 2008 was “Bleeding Love” by Leona Lewis, followed by “Love In This Club” by Usher and Young Jeezy and “Sexy Can I” by Ray J. The No. 1 movie America was “21”, about an MIT phenom who becomes a shark in Las Vegas casinos.
George Bush was still President of the United States and Hillary Clinton was still the overwhelming favorite to win the 2008 Democratic Primary. A rising Illinois senator named Barack Obama was still making his way up the polls.
UCLA represented the now-deceased PAC-12 that weekend, too. The Conference of Champions still had over a decade of memories left in store for us. We had Greg Gumble in the studio then as well, a voice that has been dearly missed.
