New Kids On The Block

[BCPanther]

If UNI’s attendance is screwed by replacing CU & WSU with Loyola & Valpo, then my team’s attendance is screwed by not replacing UNI with Murray.

No kidding. UNI has always had crappy attendance, regardless of who is in the league. The Loyola Final Four run was more relevant nationally than the Wichita one,, and I would much prefer a story like that in a city of 3 million than having one representing a cluster of trailer parks in southern Kansas.

It's good for the league that having to make moves with the defections of Creighton and WSU , the teams we chose are performing well. As we all know, at the mid major level [except for rare teams like Gonzaga] and especially historically in the Valley, everything is cyclical and most often tied to coaching competence and retention. I think every current team has proven given the right coach in place, they have the potential to compete at the top of the league. Right now 3 teams just made coaching moves, and it looks like 2-3 may be in the process of moving towards evaluating their need for the same.

When it comes to attendance, Evansville is having a nice resurgence, and it's imperative to the league that Bradley, SIU and MSU restabalize, as they are the three programs that historically were capable of 7,000 plus nightly.

SIU is never seeing 7000 again. Lowery killed the program, Barry gave it a bit of a dead cat bounce. The budget crisis is slowly killing off that university as a whole.

It's amazing to me that Bradley is still drawing what they draw with as bad as they've been and it's apparent that Wardle isn't the right guy, so they'll try rebuild number 3 here. Worst thing that happened to them was Patrick O'Bryant deciding that he wanted to play hard for half a year as that kept Les around longer than he should have been.

MSU, you're exactly right. Growing area, good population base. If Ford is the right guy and he doesn't bolt, there's a great chance to really grow that attendance.

UNI when playing well averages a bit over 5000 in the smallest metro in the league in a 6700 seat building. No issues there when decent.

Drake finally hired an Iowa guy and if he wins they will draw. Another growing metro.

Valpo is limited by capacity but have averaged 4500 in the past. Love to see that come back.

Loyola, once the shine wears off, is going to be back getting about 2000 a game. Their first two years in the league they averaged about 1200.

Evansville used to draw big, hopefully McCarty is the real deal and sticks around. They could get back into the 8000 range again.

[Valpower]

What difference does it make if we're 8th vs 12th in the NET? Our champ is pretty much always going to be an 11 to 13 seed. Why split the pot further when a school like Murray or Belmont isn't going to move the attendance needle?

If you believe you are splitting the pot further, the point of adding good teams would be to make the pot larger by making the tourney representative more competitive and, thus, get deeper into the tourney, more consistently.

[BCPanther]

What difference does it make if we're 8th vs 12th in the NET? Our champ is pretty much always going to be an 11 to 13 seed. Why split the pot further when a school like Murray or Belmont isn't going to move the attendance needle?

If you believe you are splitting the pot further, the point of adding good teams would be to make the pot larger by making the tourney representative more competitive and, thus, get deeper into the tourney, more consistently.

We haven't not had a second round team since 2011 and haven't lost a first round game since 2012. Competitiveness isn't the issue.

[All-MVC Fan]

Money makes the world go round, however the best argument for expansion is all the bitching about scheduling coming from league coaches. Go to 11 and a 20 game conference schedule, and life gets easier for the coaches. If #11 is the right program, it’ll also help the league get A) a better seed for the conference champion, or B) a better shot at multiple bids.

Seems like a no brainer to me.

[PurpleAcesFootball]

I think we need to come to grips with the fact that the MVC will be a one bid league for the foreseeable future, and adding Murray or NKU won’t change that.

Check out the latest bracket matrix:
http://www.bracketmatrix.com

Barring conference tournament upsets to Gonzaga, Nevada, Buffalo, and Houston, there is a chance that the tournament will give every at large bid to a P5 + BE team. Cincinnati and UCF are currently listed in the 9-11 seed range, but I could see Clemson, Alabama, or Missouri (first 4 out) getting an upset or two in conference play and sliding in there.

No one knows for sure how this NET system will shake out- but imagine an NCAA tournament with 28 conferences getting one bid and 6 conferences getting the other 40. It could happen.

[Drakey]

That is clearly what NET is designed to do.

[BCPanther]

Money makes the world go round, however the best argument for expansion is all the bitching about scheduling coming from league coaches. Go to 11 and a 20 game conference schedule, and life gets easier for the coaches. If #11 is the right program, it’ll also help the league get A) a better seed for the conference champion, or B) a better shot at multiple bids.

Seems like a no brainer to me.

What school is going to agree to have double the travel costs and be the one without a travel partner in women's sports? Which school is going to agree to have their women's teams miss at least double the class that every other team in the league will?

We aren't going to divide the pie any further. We could go to 18 teams and still not get an extra bid. The NCAA is now totally structured to make sure that leagues like ours don't take cash away from the P6. It's completely unrealistic at this point that the Presidents are going to approve any new membership. Plus, and we haven't even talked about it, there's no way the privates are going to allow a public football playing school into the league by itself.

[IWokeUpLikeThis]

What school is going to agree to have double the travel costs and be the one without a travel partner in women's sports? Which school is going to agree to have their women's teams miss at least double the class that every other team in the league will?

No school would miss double class time or pay double expenses. Take the Big Sky. 11 teams, lower budgets, vast geography, higher travel expenses. They make it work. So much so they encouraged their #12, UND, to leave for the Summit. (Source: spoke with Weber AD at Final 4)

We aren't going to divide the pie any further. We could go to 18 teams and still not get an extra bid. The NCAA is now totally structured to make sure that leagues like ours don't take cash away from the P6. It's completely unrealistic at this point that the Presidents are going to approve any new membership. Plus, and we haven't even talked about it, there's no way the privates are going to allow a public football playing school into the league by itself.

Bids aren’t the determinant of NCAA revenue. Units are. That’s where Murray’s value comes in, aside from picking up the slack for everyone else in St Louis.

[BCPanther]

What school is going to agree to have double the travel costs and be the one without a travel partner in women's sports? Which school is going to agree to have their women's teams miss at least double the class that every other team in the league will?

No school would miss double class time or pay double expenses. Take the Big Sky. 11 teams, lower budgets, vast geography, higher travel expenses. They make it work. So much so they encouraged their #12, UND, to leave for the Summit. (Source: spoke with Weber AD at Final 4)

We aren't going to divide the pie any further. We could go to 18 teams and still not get an extra bid. The NCAA is now totally structured to make sure that leagues like ours don't take cash away from the P6. It's completely unrealistic at this point that the Presidents are going to approve any new membership. Plus, and we haven't even talked about it, there's no way the privates are going to allow a public football playing school into the league by itself.

Bids aren’t the determinant of NCAA revenue. Units are. That’s where Murray’s value comes in, aside from picking up the slack for everyone else in St Louis.

We aren't having any issues with units. We've had a second round team every year since 2011. I must have missed the annual Murray Sweet 16 runs.

Of course they were cool with UND leaving. They were a massive geographic outlier even by Big Sky standards. In their case, 11 was a much cheaper solution than sending teams to Grand Forks from Davis or Portland or Cedar City or Flagstaff.

[TheAsianSensation]

I have no idea what to do. This is by almost every objective measure the worst Valley season, maybe in history. 15th in CNET. Not a single Group 1 win, only 4 Group 2 wins in the entire conference (and a couple of those are on the edge of going to Group 3).

NET seems to be a problem for mid-majors, but for now it's the system we got and we have to plan accordingly.

What I'm worried is the decision to come. Do we accept being a 1-bid mid-major league going forward? Of course not. But the people in charge might, they might see the college sports landscape and reallocate their focus. What I'm worried about is the discouragement of trying, if these are the types of seasons we're going to have going forward.