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Post by Cactus Panther on May 25, 2024 13:29:54 GMT -6
Pretty slim pickings. Do they even have enough programs to BE a conference?! I thought I read they were down to 7 teams (Utah Valley, Utah Tech, Southern Utah, Cal Baptist, Tarleton, Abilene Christian, UT-Arlington, I think), so as of right now, I don’t think they get an auto bid. It seems like they have fallen lower in the conference pecking order than the Southland, which means they probably are the least desirable conference west of the Mississippi. They’d probably have to add from the D2 ranks while holding on to the rest of their programs (Abilene Christian and UTA were previously in the Southland, and Cal Baptist is now a bit outside of the conference footprint), so that may be a challenge. The WAC will have auto bids next year as Seattle and Grand Canyon remain until the following year. It has one year to get an established program like Denver or D2 transitional schools. My guess is after several past reincarnations the WAC dissolves after next year, with the three Utah programs going to the Summit, UTA going to the MVC or CUSA, the other Texas programs going back to where they came from or wherever football fits and Cal Baptist going to the WCC or Big West. That's the talk. We'll see how it all transpires.
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Post by JG Panthers on May 28, 2024 9:53:24 GMT -6
Excellent video by D1 360 on MVC expansion: youtu.be/dQgb8m4j2ds?si=rqPLrLS5ZtbatOPNTL;DR He thinks the addition will come from one of NKU, UTA, St. Thomas, Milwaukee and Wright State with NKU (the vegas favorite) being the prediction and UTA and St. Thomas being strong alternatives. Milwaukee and, to a lesser extent, Wright State are darkhorse candidates.
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Post by PantherU on May 28, 2024 11:47:34 GMT -6
I was mostly against it until I found out our hoops budget would be third in the MVC.
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Post by Cactus Panther on May 28, 2024 11:54:24 GMT -6
OMG, we are back to being "5th Placers"! SRT would be proud. LOL!
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Post by cure on May 28, 2024 13:45:24 GMT -6
I think we were 4th. But watching those clips of Arch Madness got my adrenaline going to join. IFC was dead this year, HL Tournament has been dead since they changed the best conference tournament format ever.
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Post by Cactus Panther on May 28, 2024 14:58:28 GMT -6
I think we were 4th. But watching those clips of Arch Madness got my adrenaline going to join. IFC was dead this year, HL Tournament has been dead since they changed the best conference tournament format ever. 4th based on his subjective odds and 5th based on his statistical analysis. Either way, to me NKU and UTA seem like the clear cut choices with St. Thomas the dark horse. 4th on down seems quite further down by comparison. Those atmosphere videos at the beginning which include Arch Madness are awesome. A little different than IFC in March, heh? Imagine Milwaukee being there, filling three or four rows behind it's players bench while being surrounded by all those traditional MVC school colors. Maybe Milwaukee's band would be there, or cheerleaders or dance team, maybe not. Another reason why NKU should be considered the top choice - their fans and pep squads would show up. It hurts me to state this as a Panther fan, but that is the reality. I am guessing MVC decision makers would factor this into any additions they may make, along with so many other variables that D1 360 videos bring to light. They probably don't want another UIC-type fan base for a while. If they are OK with it, UTA seems to a logical choice. I'm with Buppie that the HL seems like a much better fit for us right now.
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Post by Cactus Panther on May 28, 2024 15:11:14 GMT -6
I was mostly against it until I found out our hoops budget would be third in the MVC. The guy does a fantastic job with his conference alignment videos, using as much objective data as possible and presenting it very well. However, he is limited to whatever data is available, even if not based on an apples-to-apples comparison. When it comes to budgets and expenditures, this video prompts the question - "what goes into these categories?" For example, perhaps Milwaukee's figures include financing costs of the OHOW Center whereas most other schools on the list don't have the expense or includes something similar in a separate non-athletic department category. This is just one example, there may be others. To be clear, I do not know just how apples-to-apples some of these categories are. I'm just pondering the question. I vaguely recall we have discussed such disparities here on the message board over the last several years.
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Post by ghostofdylan on May 28, 2024 15:53:24 GMT -6
I think we were 4th. But watching those clips of Arch Madness got my adrenaline going to join. IFC was dead this year, HL Tournament has been dead since they changed the best conference tournament format ever. 4th based on his subjective odds and 5th based on his statistical analysis. Either way, to me NKU and UTA seem like the clear cut choices with St. Thomas the dark horse. 4th on down seems quite further down by comparison. Those atmosphere videos at the beginning which include Arch Madness are awesome. A little different than IFC in March, heh? Imagine Milwaukee being there, filling three or four rows behind it's players bench while being surrounded by all those traditional MVC school colors. Maybe Milwaukee's band would be there, or cheerleaders or dance team, maybe not. Another reason why NKU should be considered the top choice - their fans and pep squads would show up. It hurts me to state this as a Panther fan, but that is the reality. I am guessing MVC decision makers would factor this into any additions they may make, along with so many other variables that D1 360 videos bring to light. They probably don't want another UIC-type fan base for a while. If they are OK with it, UTA seems to a logical choice. I'm with Buppie that the HL seems like a much better fit for us right now. 100% ... Sadly. We would be dwarfed at Arch Madness.
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Post by PantherU on May 28, 2024 16:45:37 GMT -6
I'm with Buppie that the HL seems like a much better fit for us right now. To me it's all about the money. If we are truly spending on hoops in the upper range of the MVC, I see no reason why we couldn't compete with that conference. If it's as you say and that money could be including our finance spending on the OHOW Center, I could see sticking around being the better fit. I will say this: there's a level of volatility in the MVC that we don't totally have in the Horizon League. I wouldn't be shocked to see UNI make the move to FBS, and if they do I see a conference that we just don't fit in all that well. The Horizon League, for all its problems, is a good fit. It's not the fit it used to be - I maintain that the Horizon League from Valpo's addition in 2007 until Butler's departure in 2012 was our best fit - but we're still talking about a conference centered around public urban universities. There is one concern I have that the MVC (or A-10) addresses and that's providing a foothold in Chicago. As far as out-of-state students, the vast majority of ours come from the Chicagoland area. No UIC, no Loyola, not even Valpo in the conference anymore, we need to figure out: would this move help us recruit students from Chicago? It's hard to say. Our Chicago student population has lowered and hasn't recovered over the last few years. I'm skeptical that it would be connected but holy hell the MVC is on national television a lot more than the Horizon League, and the at-large bid is still possible instead of only a possibility if you rattle off 30 regular season wins. If we don't make the move, I'm not going to get bent out of shape about it. GB, WSU, CSU, YSU, NKU, OU and...*sigh*...PFW and IUPUI are good fits for us. I'll mostly be disappointed if one of them scoots and we're left behind again. 100% ... Sadly. We would be dwarfed at Arch Madness. This isn't a reason not to go. Only we can control our people, and if we can keep the success sustained we can build things up. I'd like to see 500 Panthers in Indy next March (IT WOULD BE EASIER IF IT WASN'T DURING THE DAMN WEEK, HORIZON LEAGUE).
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Post by buppie05 on May 28, 2024 16:48:29 GMT -6
#imwithBuppie.
If we end up going to the MVC, I won’t lose sleep over it. That said, we finally have the opportunity again to be the big fish in a little pond. We have to be the favorites going into this year to advance to the NCAA tournament out of the Horizon. Once there, anything can happen. If BL stays around, maybe we can make it a regular thing. I’m not in a rush to leave.
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Post by skrapheap on May 28, 2024 18:09:22 GMT -6
There is one concern I have that the MVC (or A-10) addresses and that's providing a foothold in Chicago. As far as out-of-state students, the vast majority of ours come from the Chicagoland area. No UIC, no Loyola, not even Valpo in the conference anymore, we need to figure out: would this move help us recruit students from Chicago? It's hard to say. Our Chicago student population has lowered and hasn't recovered over the last few years. I'm skeptical that it would be connected but holy hell the MVC is on national television a lot more than the Horizon League, and the at-large bid is still possible instead of only a possibility if you rattle off 30 regular season wins. An unmentioned (probably because it's not all that well known) factor in recruitment in Illinois is cost. UWM used to be part of the Midwest Student Exchange Program, which came out of a coalition of midwestern states. The MSEP rate was more than the resident rate, but significantly lower than the non-resident rate, so it was attractive to students from Illinois and other participating states. When the state of Illinois was participating in MSEP, UWM saw a large surge in enrollment from Illinois, in particular from northern Illinois, because the difference in resident tuition at a public university in Illinois was very little different from the MSEP rate at UWM. Illinois dropped out of MSEP a little more than a year ago, so, in order not to lose the students who had come to UWM because of the special tuition rate, UWM and other UW institutions asked for and received permission from UW System to offer a new tuition rate, to a larger pool of students, beginning last fall. The Midwest Tution rate is the same as the MSEP rate, and is offered to students from more midwestern states than was possible under the MSEP. The reduction in cost should continue to help UWM attract students from outside Wisconsin. The lower cost should help attract students who are basketball fans to choose UWM when coupled with the program's ongoing success, which should in turn help make the Panthers more attractive to other conferences/leagues.
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Post by TBone on May 29, 2024 11:05:36 GMT -6
This talk of budget and expenditures based on the last few years is obsolete.
The new agreement that was agreed upon by the NCAA and the power conferences has a BIG impact on the mid-majors, as mid-majors now have to pay 60% of the cost paid by the universities for the next ten years (I believe) in back pay for NIL-related loss of payments - though most of the NIL-related financial losses would have likely gone to players that played primarily at power conference schools. Now that schools can pay athletes (my understanding is that schools can opt out, and many mid-majors may in that case due to much more limited budgets, but I could also be wrong in my assumption here) in addition to NIL, how does that impact budgets? Will all sports have to be paid? What about Title IX? Will money be taken from other AD-related spending to accommodate for these payments? There are a lot of questions that need to be answered and solidified in regards to this new development that will have a HUGE impact on the mid and low majors. Coach tweeted (or did he Xed?) a few days ago a link that goes into more detail on it, and how it is really screwing the non-power conferences. In the end, it is continued proof of the rich getting richer while the poor get even more poor.
With all of that said, it seems hard to predict the viability and future level of any mid or low major conference. But given that uncertainty, it would seem to me that the best thing to do would be move up, if at all possible, while we can to better conferences in our primary sport: men's hoops. And the MVC is a significant step up from the Horizon, regardless of fit. Failing to make proactive moves may result in us on the outside looking in. You may indeed see a similar conference re-shuffling (that we saw of the major conferences over the last few years) of the lower level conferences as a result of this new ruling and the rulings that will come after it.
Having said all that, and based on what I've read here, (haven't watched the video yet) I don't have high hopes of us being invited to the Valley this time around.
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Post by Cactus Panther on May 29, 2024 15:16:34 GMT -6
This talk of budget and expenditures based on the last few years is obsolete. The new agreement that was agreed upon by the NCAA and the power conferences has a BIG impact on the mid-majors, as mid-majors now have to pay 60% of the cost paid by the universities for the next ten years (I believe) in back pay for NIL-related loss of payments - though most of the NIL-related financial losses would have likely gone to players that played primarily at power conference schools. Now that schools can pay athletes (my understanding is that schools can opt out, and many mid-majors may in that case due to much more limited budgets, but I could also be wrong in my assumption here) in addition to NIL, how does that impact budgets? Will all sports have to be paid? What about Title IX? Will money be taken from other AD-related spending to accommodate for these payments? There are a lot of questions that need to be answered and solidified in regards to this new development that will have a HUGE impact on the mid and low majors. Coach tweeted (or did he Xed?) a few days ago a link that goes into more detail on it, and how it is really screwing the non-power conferences. In the end, it is continued proof of the rich getting richer while the poor get even more poor. With all of that said, it seems hard to predict the viability and future level of any mid or low major conference. But given that uncertainty, it would seem to me that the best thing to do would be move up, if at all possible, while we can to better conferences in our primary sport: men's hoops. And the MVC is a significant step up from the Horizon, regardless of fit. Failing to make proactive moves may result in us on the outside looking in. You may indeed see a similar conference re-shuffling (that we saw of the major conferences over the last few years) of the lower level conferences as a result of this new ruling and the rulings that will come after it. Having said all that, and based on what I've read here, (haven't watched the video yet) I don't have high hopes of us being invited to the Valley this time around. Great questions and comments. This is not your older sibling's collegiate sports environment. It seems that radical changes are occurring swiftly to the extent even the most knowledgeable insiders have a hard time grasping where all of this is going. If we could gaze into a crystal ball 5 or 10 years ahead, we mid-major fans may not recognize what we currently see.
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Post by reginaldkdwight on May 29, 2024 17:43:25 GMT -6
I didnt know anyone who was actually from chicago that went to Milwaukee, most are from the wasteland of nothingness north of the actual burbs.
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Post by PantherU on May 29, 2024 20:24:19 GMT -6
I didnt know anyone who was actually from chicago that went to Milwaukee, most are from the wasteland of nothingness north of the actual burbs. I'm not picky, we need more students.
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