Wisconsin vs. Michigan proved why the Big Ten Championship game won't ever be moved

There are some significant problems with the Big Ten Tournament Championship game being on Sunday afternoon, right before Selection Sunday. The biggest one is that it is notably not relevant for the NCAA Tournament. Michigan proved that with a five seed in the NCAA Tournament even though they won the Big Ten Tournament Championship. That is indicative that they were pre-assigned that seed regardless.

It also poses a problem for the turnaround for Big Ten teams in that game, which will then have to play a few days later in the NCAA Tournament. This is the case for Wisconsin this year, as they played Sunday afternoon and now have to play Thursday in the middle of the day. That's only a few days of rest, and travel needs to be factored in.

Many have wondered if the game should be moved to Saturday or Friday or some other hypothetical day on which both of these two major problems are avoided. That won't happen, and Wisconsin and Michigan proved it by bringing in a huge number of viewers and thus money for both the Big Ten and CBS.

Wisconsin and Michigan was the most-watched Big Ten Men's Basketball Championship since 2014

The game had 4.531 million people watching it and, at one point, 5.819 million. Those are staggering numbers for a college basketball game (that is not the NCAA Tournament). Only one other game brought in those big numbers, and it was Illinois-Arkansas on Thanksgiving.

It also became the most streamed regular-season college basketball game on Paramount+. These stats are eye-popping.

Therefore, you can see the appeal for the Big Ten. It's a huge source of revenue and eyeballs for the product. The Big Ten will take the two tradeoffs mentioned above to pull these sorts of numbers. Wisconsin and Michigan may have played a very tired basketball game in which neither team looked great, but it brought in a ton of money for the Big Ten.