If you're a college basketball fan and you hear the term “blue bloods,” unless your favorite actor is Tom Selleck, the first thing you're going to think of is a medley of programs who fit this description. Duke, North Carolina, Kentucky, UCLA, Kansas and Indiana. This weekend, not only do Carolina and Kentucky play in a highly-anticipated neutral site game in Atlanta, but Kansas heads to Assembly Hall in Bloomington to face a Hoosiers team that is itching to nab one marquee non-conference win before they get into the thick of Big Ten action.

While Carolina and Kentucky on a neutral floor is exciting, as is Arizona and Purdue at Gainbridge Fieldhouse — this is an absolutely LOADED weekend of college hoops, by the way — there's something about the appeal of watching two of the most prestigious programs in the history of college basketball face each other in a venue with as much history as the two teams playing in the game. That's why this home and home series between Indiana and Kansas is so special for college hoops fans. Seeing those teams, those uniforms, those programs with so much history playing in venues like Allen Fieldhouse or Assembly Hall, that takes it up a level. Unfortunately, games of this magnitude in buildings with such history could be phased out for neutral site matchups at NBA arenas with constantly changing corporate sponsors and no college basketball history whatsoever.

“Bill Self, meeting with the media today, said no decision has been made on if they'll extend this home-and-home with Indiana/Kansas beyond this year. Definitely good for the sport, he noted. But when it comes to scheduling, not the only school #kubball is looking at,” per a tweet from Jordan Guskey of The Topeka Capital-Journal. 

At least Bill Self sees that matchups of this magnitude are good for the sport, and hopefully more coaches and administrators with a similar point of view will speak out on the importance of keeping games like this played in college arenas as opposed to placing them in venues where there could be a bigger gate. What makes college sports — not just basketball — so special are the venues and traditions that give every game a unique feel so long as they are being played on a college campus. It shouldn't matter that the capacity of Cameron Indoor Stadium is half of what it is at the nearby Spectrum Center. College basketball fans want the atmosphere as much as anything else.

And that's what this game between the Kansas Jayhawks and Indiana Hoosiers will provide. It will be any college basketball historian's game of the day by a wide margin, and those are the exact kind of matchups schools should be looking to schedule in the early months of the season.