There are hard truths we all have to face at some point when we’re growing up: Not everyone is going to like you, your parents aren’t perfect, Rainbow Road can be fun but it’s clearly the most overrated track on Mario Kart, etc.
The same can be said for growing up as a sports fan. At some point in our lives everyone learned the all important lesson that preseason games don’t matter.
For me, it was 1991. The Detroit Lions had just lost a preseason game to I don’t even remember who, and a young Barry Sanders-obsessed Mike on the verge of tears had to be reassured by his father that what he just watched “didn’t count.”
They wore their normal jerseys. There were fans in the stands. They had referees. They kept score.
What kind of upside-down bizarro world had I found myself transported to?
Despite the initial “your first dog just went to live on a special farm” vibe, eventually the lesson sunk in for me, like it did for all of us. Accepting the knowledge that we should more or less ignore the final scores from preseason games in the NFL, NBA, NHL and every other league that has a preseason is now universally recognized as an important milestone in the development of every sports fan.
Now, for deeply imbedded members of the college basketball world, it feels like the lesson is being taught all over again.
For the unaware, 2025 is the first season where Division-I college basketball teams are permitted to play exhibition games against one another without needing a waiver from the NCAA. In recent seasons, there have been a handful of high-profile exhibition games between D-I squads, but those games had to be played for charitable purposes and needed NCAA permission.
What this means is that, for the first time ever, we’re getting what feels like a “proper” college basketball preseason where legitimate national title contenders are squaring off against one another instead of beating up on teams from the D-II, D-III and NAIA levels.
What it also means is that we’re getting people who are absolutely losing it over the results of some of these practice games.
In the last week alone, we’ve seen preseason No.2 Houston get blasted by unranked Ole Miss in a not-so-secret scrimmage, No. 5 St. John’s trail Towson at halftime of an exhibition, No. 7 Michigan lose to unranked Cincinnati, No. 8 BYU lose to unranked Nebraska, No. 15 Alabama give up 105 points to unranked Florida State, and No. 16 Iowa State lose to unranked Creighton.
Thankfully, everyone has taken these results in stride and no one has overreacted.
(This is where I let you know that the previous statement was sarcasm and that there HAS, in fact, been some freaking out and overreacting to the previously laid out preseason results).
Re-learning things past a certain age is an absolute chore, but college basketball fans are going to have polish up on their knowledge of what preseason games do and do not mean if they’re going to make it to the first week of November without losing their minds.
A year ago at this time, Indiana took down Tennessee in a charity exhibition game that had Hoosier fans believing that Mike Woodson was on the verge of bringing IU back to the promised land. USC toppled Gonzaga in a high-scoring affair that had several people predicting that the Trojans were a darkhorse title contender in the Big Ten.
Then, the games started counting.
Tennessee earned a No. 2 seed in the NCAA Tournament and played in the Elite Eight, while Indiana missed the Big Dance entirely and fired Woodson. USC finished below .500 for the season, while Gonzaga won a game in the NCAA Tournament for the billionth (approximately) year in a row.
It’s fine to be taken with the impressive first glimpses at 5-star freshmen like A.J. Dybantsa or Cameron Boozer. It’s not fine to act like the final scores we see in these games are going to be at all reflective of what’s about to take place in the beautiful five-month journey that gets underway on Nov. 3.
It is crucial to hammer this information into our brains at this moment, because look at the slate of exhibition games that we’re about to get hit with.
Oct. 24th
North Carolina at BYU
Kansas at Louisville
Villanova at Virginia
DePaul at Notre Dame
Purdue at Kentucky
Kansas State at Missouri
Utah at Oregon
Oct. 25th
Michigan at St. John’s (MSG)
Oklahoma State at SMU
Oct. 26th
Indiana vs. Baylor
Northwestern at Iowa State
Duke at Tennessee
Houston vs. Mississippi State
Arizona State vs. Texas A&M
NC State vs. South Carolina
Oct. 27th
Arkansas at Memphis
Oct. 28th
Michigan State at UConn
Oct. 30th
Auburn vs. Memphis
Oregon at Stanford
There is a 98 percent chance that at least a couple of these games are going to give us some final scores that are begging for an overreaction. Every instinct in our sports-ruined brains is going to tell us to make a sweeping generalization about which teams are “legitimate” Final Four contenders and which teams aren’t. We must, I repeat must, resist.
Remember the early 1990s Buffalo Bills (essentially the Bible for learning that preseason games don’t matter. Those teams lost like 15 or something (it’s been a while since I read the Bible) consecutive preseason games and still went to the Super Bowl in four consecutive years.
The hot takes can start flying once we flip the calendar, and there will be plenty of time for more after that. For now, everyone needs to keep them holstered.
