Does Belmont Actually Exist?

[MissouriValleyUnite]

This is a real mystery...like when there were no Rambler fans at Ballpark Village during Arch Madness. I don't recall if there were many Bruin fans in St. Louis last year...I know they lost their first game so maybe not.

I saw at least 1 Belmont shirt walking around the concourse. UIC, Valpo, and Belmont probably combined for about 20 fans total.

When I went to the Belmont/Bradley game in Nashville last year, I struck up a conversation with a Belmont fan. The guy looked perplexed when I told him that he should check out the conference tournament in St. Louis. Like the concept of traveling to watch Belmont basketball was not something he had ever considered.

With Valpo, they always have that 1 fan who looks like Santa Claus that wears the 90s era "V" logo shirt. He's there every year and stays for the whole tournament. You can always count on him.

With Belmont, their fans show up for Belmont's game, don't show much emotion other than clapping, and then aren't seen or heard from again. It's very Fahrenheit 451-like where it seems their fans are cloned and/or AI-generated.

[Bulldog2323]

I'm guessing Belmont has a similar problem in the Nashville/overall Tennessee market that Drake has in the Des Moines/Iowa market going up against Iowa/Iowa State/Tennessee for coverage.

If you want coverage from The Tennessean or any other newspaper, convince everyone you know with a budget to spend their entire budget on digital advertising surrounding coverage of your team. Otherwise, the focus will continue to be where the clicks are, and it's not on MVC teams.

[purple&orange]

Prior to Evansville hosting the OVC Tournament it was held at the Nashville Auditorium and the year prior to the event coming to Evansville one of the women's coaches sounded off on the lack of coverage for the entire league in the Nashville market.

The coach held up the newspaper, nothing. The coach noted the SEC school banners around for the following week's SEC Tournament being held at Bridgestone Arena. There were no OVC banners hung around the arena hosting the tournament. The OVC was a complete afterthought on both the men's and women's side in Nashville in an older arena if I'm not mistaken. Perhaps some Murray fans can chime in on that as well.

No school inside the city outside of Vanderbilt seems to matter to Nashville as a whole, which is a shame because Belmont has grown into a really really nice program and have played an incredibly fun style of basketball to watch with a couple guys who've gone to the NBA.

[racernation]

All true. Nashville media doesn't give a hoot about Belmont. The add for the market was a head scratcher.

[E-Villan]

I have been to two OVC Championship games at the Ford Center between Murray and Belmont. Even as the #1 seed I believe both times, they couldn't have had more than 75-100 people there at most. They couldn't have been bigger Murray home games if they were played at CFSB.

If they can't get fans to make a 2-hour trip to a conference championship game as the #1 seed, I wouldn't plan on seeing hordes of them going 4-5 hours to St. Louis.

[Blers42]

This is a real mystery...like when there were no Rambler fans at Ballpark Village during Arch Madness. I don't recall if there were many Bruin fans in St. Louis last year...I know they lost their first game so maybe not.

Actually there were two at BallPark Village. And Todd Thomas gave them a bunch of crap. But after Loyola beating Illinois State for the Championship, those two Loyola fans got the last laugh.

I wish I could have made Arch Madness but I was always too busy with work and saved my days off for March Madness instead.