For years now, college hoops programs have opened their season with exhibition games. At the elite level, these games accomplish two things. They a) serve up some sacrificial chum for big name programs, and b) create a money-making opportunity for schools with fan bases rabid enough to pack a 10,000-seat gym to watch meaningless basketball.

You would think, given these two relatively attractive purposes, that college hoops exhibitions would be around forever. Not so. As the Washington Times reports today, many schools are deciding to forgo the exhibition scene altogether, instead opting for closed, controlled scrimmages. But why?

"It doesn't have the same limitations as an exhibition game," Hokies coach Seth Greenberg said. "You play an exhibition game, and you never really know who you're playing. You can play three guys who have Seth Greenberg's hairline and two guys that played 20 years ago in America and are just hanging on to a paycheck. If you're scrimmaging Georgetown, you know what you're getting."

Seth Greenberg is hilarious.

Of course, these scrimmages are closed, meaning no fans, no media, no pictures, and no athletics department press releases on the proceedings. They're just like practice, and coaches can structure an agenda for the scrimmage, too -- Dino Gaudio does segments of man-to-man defense, and then zone, and then, I don't know, probably that weird squishy man-zone thing that Wake Forest used against good guards last year.

The point is: more control, less unexpected weirdness. It's not exactly surprising that college coaches want more control; the profession is rife with control freaks. But the notion college programs would be willing to give up an extra game or two of home ticket sales revenue for sake of more structure. That's a surprise.

Related: ACC Basketball, NCAA Rules and Regs