In football there are about 4-5 conference games and usually 1 OOC game that really matter for teams trying to advance toward a national championship. Teams who have more competitive games than this are rarely in contention for the playoff.
In basketball I could argue the same is true. 4-5 conference games and 1 headliner OOC game determine the teams trying to get in on the bubble for the tournament. The rest of the games are usually easy wins or obvious losses.
In that way the two sports are similar. The only difference is that basketball wastes a lot more time around those games trying to entertain people and get to the end of the regular season.