by CaliRdBrd » January 6th, 2014, 4:51 pm
Sounds like your anger should be placed toward Creighton for leaving, or at the very least toward some other longtime member of the conference for not stepping up to replace Creighton's RPI, attendance and SOS-- since 8 MVC teams were in a much better position to do that since April.
Now that we're a member of the MVC, it will be much easier for us to compose a schedule that helps to protect everybody's RPI. Take a look at Horizon League non-con schedules to see what kind of scheduling deals were possible for us before we joined the MVC.
No, we're never going to match Wichita State's attendance, and probably not even Bradley's attendance. Yes, we're a different and unfamiliar animal for MVC fans-- an urban, private school, very few of which are able to take over the imagination of a city that has multiple major league pro sports teams.
It's not our fault that there wasn't a ready-made, successful, high-attendance, basketball-oriented school within the league footprint that was willing to join the MVC. The other alternatives, as I understand it, were Belmont, UIC, Valpo, and UMKC. Denver never considered membership, and Belmont passed. We were not only willing to join, but wildly eager to do so. We paid off the Horizon to get the hell out, and paid admission to join. We made significant future financial commitments to join. We've made substantial facilities upgrades in the multiple tens of millions of dollars to create an infrastructure that was acceptable to the league, with more upgrades on the way. We are academically and financially at or near the top of the conference. We are in a market with the best transportation in the midwest and the largest market size in the midwest.
I'll accept the barbs about how much we sucked in the non-con, and apologize to everyone else in the league as a longtime Loyola fan and graduate. But when it comes to us not "deserving" to join, or being expected to replace Creighton in every respect out of the box, that's just an unfair and unreasonable expectation.[/quote]
Not that matters what I think, but I like the addition of Loyola for all the reasons stated. Welcome aboard.