Attendance

[BCPanther]

SIU is not happy with the Valley office on scheduling . We are the only league school to have only ONE Saturday home conference game where EVERY other school in the league as at least THREE Saturday games and four school's have five home Saturday games. Not sure how this can be justified ? SIU does have 3 Sunday games but those don't tend to draw as well, and even with those it still leaves them short on weekend games. So, it maybe hard for SIU to continue to lead the Valley in home attendance, but of course if they keep winning that will sure help.

Your anger is misplaced. That's TV's call Plus there are huge advantages to playing Sunday in terms of officiating.

Please explain that ? So, SIU doesn't get to play at home as much on weekends because TV doesn't want them to ? And SIU fans should be happy because they will get better officials? Only the game with Missouri State was scheduled for TV when the schedule came out. One game I can buy but come on this doesn't make sense. The other three games were either scheduled for Espn3 or Espn+ with an option for the wildcard game but no guarantee that it would be broadcast on any of the regular ESPN networks.

The league office literally doesn't do any scheduling. They contract with a guy named Kevin Pauga that schedules the Valley, the Big 12 and several others. He works with the TV networks and the officiating consortium to 1) satisfy the TV networks/contracts, 2) put projected important games in important spots on the calendar, 3) schedule so that the best officials are available to work our games and 4) work around facility availability and the 5 weekend/5 mid-week rule.

Looks like you ended up a weekend short because you scheduled St Louis on what should have been a weekend home game forcing your Indiana State home game to midweek. For league purposes, there is no difference between Saturday and Sunday.

[Bulldog2323]

UNI continues to do our standard 3500-4500. I suspect Bradley and Belmont will both sell out or come close. I'd say Drake too but an 8:00 Wednesday night tip doesn't typically go over great here, I'd expect 5000-5500 that night.

Listed McLeod Capacity is now 6497 with removing some seats for a new party/suite/private gathering area.

Knapp Center capacity is also down after the lower seating was redone over the summer. Previously was about 7100, now about 6500. They are redoing the upper level this coming summer, and capacity will be reduced again. I'm guessing about 6000 when they are all done.

Anyway, got an e-mail today from Drake that said the entire lower bowl is sold out for the UNI game. Interesting that they are selling GA tickets for more $$$ than previous games.

The UNI game is always considered a "premium game" and more expensive than any other on the calendar. Almost every ticket promo Drake does specifically excludes the UNI men's game and either the Iowa/Iowa State women's game (whichever one we have at home in a given year).

[MissouriValleyUnite]

Kevin Pauga is the Michigan St Associate AD and has no interest in the Valley yet runs our schedules.

The Valley needs someone whose heart is in the Valley to run scheduling. The only Sunday games competing against the NFL should be the ones with a linear tv slot - if a game’s on streaming, that game should be on a Saturday for the convenience of the fan base. Also, someone who understands that our rvialries should be on weekends (Drake/UNI, ISU/Bradley, SIU/Murray, Murray/Evansville, etc) instead of a Michigan St guy who couldn’t care less about who’s rivals with who.

[Drakey]

Kevin Pauga is the Michigan St Associate AD and has no interest in the Valley yet runs our schedules.

The Valley needs someone whose heart is in the Valley to run scheduling. The only Sunday games competing against the NFL should be the ones with a linear tv slot - if a game’s on streaming, that game should be on a Saturday for the convenience of the fan base. Also, someone who understands that our rvialries should be on weekends (Drake/UNI, ISU/Bradley, SIU/Murray, Murray/Evansville, etc) instead of a Michigan St guy who couldn’t care less about who’s rivals with who.

Didn't know that. Ridiculous.

[IllinoisState]

Kevin Pauga is the Michigan St Associate AD and has no interest in the Valley yet runs our schedules.

The Valley needs someone whose heart is in the Valley to run scheduling. The only Sunday games competing against the NFL should be the ones with a linear tv slot - if a game’s on streaming, that game should be on a Saturday for the convenience of the fan base. Also, someone who understands that our rvialries should be on weekends (Drake/UNI, ISU/Bradley, SIU/Murray, Murray/Evansville, etc) instead of a Michigan St guy who couldn’t care less about who’s rivals with who.

Do you have a source for this?

[BCPanther]

Kevin Pauga is the Michigan St Associate AD and has no interest in the Valley yet runs our schedules.

The Valley needs someone whose heart is in the Valley to run scheduling. The only Sunday games competing against the NFL should be the ones with a linear tv slot - if a game’s on streaming, that game should be on a Saturday for the convenience of the fan base. Also, someone who understands that our rvialries should be on weekends (Drake/UNI, ISU/Bradley, SIU/Murray, Murray/Evansville, etc) instead of a Michigan St guy who couldn’t care less about who’s rivals with who.

So he's good enough for the Big 12 but not us. Sure. Just a hunch that using a guy that the networks seem to really like might be to our advantage

[MissouriValleyUnite]

Kevin Pauga is the Michigan St Associate AD and has no interest in the Valley yet runs our schedules.

The Valley needs someone whose heart is in the Valley to run scheduling. The only Sunday games competing against the NFL should be the ones with a linear tv slot - if a game’s on streaming, that game should be on a Saturday for the convenience of the fan base. Also, someone who understands that our rvialries should be on weekends (Drake/UNI, ISU/Bradley, SIU/Murray, Murray/Evansville, etc) instead of a Michigan St guy who couldn’t care less about who’s rivals with who.

So he's good enough for the Big 12 but not us. Sure. Just a hunch that using a guy that the networks seem to really like might be to our advantage

But he doesn’t care about the MVC, as evidenced by how many of our rivalry games are wasted on weeknights or how many of our league games are wasted on Sundays against the NFL that are streaming and not even on linear tv.

His connections serve P5 basketball and their needs, which are run by massive media deals with almost all games on linear tv. P5 needs are not the same as MVC needs, where most games are streamed and our media deal is tiny, yet we throwaway away a bunch of our schools’ home games on Sundays when people would rather stay home and watch the NFL…all while many of these Sunday games are streamed on espn+ and not even on linear tv. And we also throwaway a bunch of rivalry games on weeknights so they can be aired on RSNs, which we don’t even make money off.

Our rivalry games should be on weekends. The only Sunday games should be the ones selected by national tv. We don’t make anywhere near enough on media rights to have this many games handcuffed that aren’t even on linear tv.

[smidge34]

6712 announced for Mo State @ Murray State today, nice crowd for the 1 pm tip.

[BCPanther]

Kevin Pauga is the Michigan St Associate AD and has no interest in the Valley yet runs our schedules.

The Valley needs someone whose heart is in the Valley to run scheduling. The only Sunday games competing against the NFL should be the ones with a linear tv slot - if a game’s on streaming, that game should be on a Saturday for the convenience of the fan base. Also, someone who understands that our rvialries should be on weekends (Drake/UNI, ISU/Bradley, SIU/Murray, Murray/Evansville, etc) instead of a Michigan St guy who couldn’t care less about who’s rivals with who.

So he's good enough for the Big 12 but not us. Sure. Just a hunch that using a guy that the networks seem to really like might be to our advantage

But he doesn’t care about the MVC, as evidenced by how many of our rivalry games are wasted on weeknights or how many of our league games are wasted on Sundays against the NFL that are streaming and not even on linear tv.

His connections serve P5 basketball and their needs, which are run by massive media deals with almost all games on linear tv. P5 needs are not the same as MVC needs, where most games are streamed and our media deal is tiny, yet we throwaway away a bunch of our schools’ home games on Sundays when people would rather stay home and watch the NFL…all while many of these Sunday games are streamed on espn+ and not even on linear tv. And we also throwaway a bunch of rivalry games on weeknights so they can be aired on RSNs, which we don’t even make money off.

Our rivalry games should be on weekends. The only Sunday games should be the ones selected by national tv. We don’t make anywhere near enough on media rights to have this many games handcuffed that aren’t even on linear tv.

You're totally ignoring officiating. We have access to MUCH better officials midweek and Sunday. I'd much rather pay important games with the guys working the Big 12 and deep in the tournament then the absolute dreck we get on Saturdays. I hate when I watch important games and it's Roland Simmons, Jeff Campbell and Kevin Driver instead of Kipp Kissinger, Gerry Pollard and Antinio Petty, etc. Every coach in the league would agree with me on that.

Basically we can act like the big boys with our scheduling and TV, even if we're not making huge money or we can act like the Horizon or Summit Leagues.

[RacerJoeD]

Murray State with attendance of 6,712 for todays game.