Post by PantherU on May 10, 2024 10:34:08 GMT -6
I created a separate thread because that one is simply for conference realignment.
Missouri State is leaving the Missouri Valley for Conference USA.
This is interesting for multiple reasons.
First off, we look at the MVC as aspirational. The basketball is better than the Horizon League. With the addition of RMU, the geographic center of the Horizon League has moved considerably to the east. Yes the MVC has been a one-bid league for a long time, but the winner of Arch Madness always gets a better seed in the NCAA Tournament since the two conferences have largely settled in the past decade or so.
I'd like to take a look at several factors and we can discuss their merits afterward.
Geography: What used to be the best argument for remaining in the Horizon League has become a hard knock against it. Green Bay is the only conference opponent within a three-hour drive of Milwaukee. There used to be three Horizon League schools closer to Milwaukee than Green Bay. Now, two of those three schools are IN the Missouri Valley Conference. A Thursday evening road game at UIC or Valparaiso is more possible than our next two closest schools, Fort Wayne and IU Indy.
Meanwhile, the furthest MVC opponent for Milwaukee is the one vacating its space. That's true! Despite being in Tennessee, Belmont is actually 25 miles closer to campus than Missouri State. Of the current makeup of the MVC (this will be important later), there are five games closer to our campus than the next best game after Green Bay: Illinois State, Bradley, Indiana State, UIC and Valpo. Indiana State is roughly 15 miles closer than Fort Wayne so that's kind of a horse apiece, but it's still closer.
The geographic center of the Horizon League is eastern Indiana or western Ohio. The geographic center of the MVC, if you add Milwaukee, is a couple hours south of Chicago.
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Budget: It's difficult to compare Milwaukee to most MVC schools because of football at much of the conference, but our reported numbers fall basically in line with Indiana State. UIC has a budget several million over us, but this was true even when they were in the Horizon League. Other non-football schools are a little harder to put together because they're mostly private, therefore it will be difficult to come up with budgets.
Coaches salaries take a significant bump up in the MVC. Steve Prohm is making $520k at Murray State, Ben Jacobson is north of $900k at UNI, Scott Nagy is making $600k, Brian Wardle is over $700k at Bradley, Drew Valentine is @ $775k. These are drastic jumps up and together with the expected increase in spending overall would be the biggest hurdle by far for Milwaukee in joining the Missouri Valley Conference.
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Basketball: It's just better. While YSU looks like it's keeping things together with Ethan Faulkner, we won't know how he does as a coach until he's on the floor. Wright State, on the other hand, looks like they could be nose diving back to the floor they were at before hiring Brad Brownell almost 20 years ago. Oakland is refreshing their practice space and YSU is redoing the seats in Beeghly, but there are questions. Greg Kampe is north of 70 and they haven't had another head coach since Reagan was in office.
The Valley has strong basketball, but it's not top-to-bottom as it used to be. For the top of the league from this season, Indiana State is an unknown but Drake just hired the guy we all tried in vain to hire in Ben McCollum. I do not expect them to fall off. UNI is entrenched with a couple NCAA Tourney wins in the last decade (albeit almost a decade ago). SIU should hopefully get better with Nagy, Evansville is the MVC's version of Detroit Mercy and the newcomers are all still trying to get their feet wet (Murray State, Belmont, UIC and Valpo).
The conference tournament is superior in essentially every way. While the Horizon League tries to settle in at the Farmers Coliseum in Indy, the Enterprise Center (used to be Kiel Center) in St. Louis has been the home to Arch Madness for over 30 years. The conference tournament takes place over a weekend with its championship on national over-the-air television - CBS rather than ESPN. The MVC also makes some money with their television deal, although I don't think it's enough to really fund any of their programs.
What the MVC TV revenue DOES fund is also the thing that would probably be the most noticeable for Milwaukee fans. Referees in the MVC make considerably more than HL referees make. I don't know how much or if any overlap is there, but the MVC pays for a top tier class of referee and I sure would like to stop complaining about officiating so much.
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Rivalry: The loss of the home-and-home with Green Bay would be the biggest loss here. I've grown accustomed to hard-fought games with NKU and Oakland, and YSU's delayed ascension has finally made that a good game, but I think GB would be the only game I'd demand to be played every year if we were to move conferences. We have more historically bitter rivalries in the MVC with UIC and Valpo there, and it's likely that we'd be able to get ones going with UNI and Illinois State pretty quickly. We will IMMEDIATELY get sh*tty with Brian Wardle and Bradley (wink wink nudge nudge). I would miss certain HL rivalries but none of them except GB are irreplaceable.
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Sports: Would we need to add sports? The MVC sponsors softball as well, and that sport is pretty important to the conference.
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Continuity: This right here is the thing that gives me more pause than anything else. Missouri State is leaving the MVC because they're trying to make it in football. Unless we're going to add football, this is nothing but a negative for us. Remaining MVFC (Missouri Valley Football Conference) schools in the MVC ar UNI, both ISU's, SIU and Murray State. That's five schools, four of whom are long-term MVC members. I think Murray State and Indiana State are not likely to move up to FBS (I-A) in a bid to get to the bigger money, but this is definitely a concern with Illinois State, Southern Illinois and Northern Iowa.
The NCAA recently waived their requirement for schools to average more than 15,000 fans per game to be in FBS. From what I gather, this is why a bunch of schools are making the jump. I don't think it's at all unlikely to see any or all three of those schools make the jump to Conference USA, the MAC or some other FBS conference.
Meanwhile, I've grown to appreciate what we have here. For better or worse, Milwaukee has been tied at the hip for 30 years to Green Bay, Cleveland State and Wright State. YSU is almost 25 years. Detroit Mercy is 30 years, although I think that's more their inability to fund their way out rather than any connection I feel to the program. Oakland and NKU are strong connections and similiar profiles. GB, CSU, WSU, Oakland and NKU don't play football. We're all urban public universities. The same is true for IU Indy and Purdue Fort Wayne, although I'm not sold on those schools being able to totally put it together in basketball.
I think when we think of moving to the Missouri Valley Conference, we're thinking of Ali Faroukhmanesh, Bradley in the Sweet 16, Creighton and Wichita State. This isn't the same conference, and it's likely that more dominoes will fall in the coming years.
Are we okay with a conference of Drake, Bradley, Valpo, UIC, Indiana State, Evansville, Murray State and Belmont? If Indiana State is able to recover from their coaching change it looks fairly enticing to me. On the other hand, UIC is the only school in that group that really resembles us. I will say that UIC is closer to us than any institution in the country, being the other public urban doctoral R1 research university on Lake Michigan. But that conference as a whole looks like one that teeters on the brink of breaking up entirely. There's very little continuity - Drake, Bradley, Indiana State and Evansville would be their sole members over 10 years in the conference - and there's no guarantee they even stick around. I think Drake and Bradley would be begging the A-10 for spots in that instance and I don't know if the A-10 says yes or no.
This is interesting for multiple reasons.
First off, we look at the MVC as aspirational. The basketball is better than the Horizon League. With the addition of RMU, the geographic center of the Horizon League has moved considerably to the east. Yes the MVC has been a one-bid league for a long time, but the winner of Arch Madness always gets a better seed in the NCAA Tournament since the two conferences have largely settled in the past decade or so.
I'd like to take a look at several factors and we can discuss their merits afterward.
Geography: What used to be the best argument for remaining in the Horizon League has become a hard knock against it. Green Bay is the only conference opponent within a three-hour drive of Milwaukee. There used to be three Horizon League schools closer to Milwaukee than Green Bay. Now, two of those three schools are IN the Missouri Valley Conference. A Thursday evening road game at UIC or Valparaiso is more possible than our next two closest schools, Fort Wayne and IU Indy.
Meanwhile, the furthest MVC opponent for Milwaukee is the one vacating its space. That's true! Despite being in Tennessee, Belmont is actually 25 miles closer to campus than Missouri State. Of the current makeup of the MVC (this will be important later), there are five games closer to our campus than the next best game after Green Bay: Illinois State, Bradley, Indiana State, UIC and Valpo. Indiana State is roughly 15 miles closer than Fort Wayne so that's kind of a horse apiece, but it's still closer.
The geographic center of the Horizon League is eastern Indiana or western Ohio. The geographic center of the MVC, if you add Milwaukee, is a couple hours south of Chicago.
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Budget: It's difficult to compare Milwaukee to most MVC schools because of football at much of the conference, but our reported numbers fall basically in line with Indiana State. UIC has a budget several million over us, but this was true even when they were in the Horizon League. Other non-football schools are a little harder to put together because they're mostly private, therefore it will be difficult to come up with budgets.
Coaches salaries take a significant bump up in the MVC. Steve Prohm is making $520k at Murray State, Ben Jacobson is north of $900k at UNI, Scott Nagy is making $600k, Brian Wardle is over $700k at Bradley, Drew Valentine is @ $775k. These are drastic jumps up and together with the expected increase in spending overall would be the biggest hurdle by far for Milwaukee in joining the Missouri Valley Conference.
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Basketball: It's just better. While YSU looks like it's keeping things together with Ethan Faulkner, we won't know how he does as a coach until he's on the floor. Wright State, on the other hand, looks like they could be nose diving back to the floor they were at before hiring Brad Brownell almost 20 years ago. Oakland is refreshing their practice space and YSU is redoing the seats in Beeghly, but there are questions. Greg Kampe is north of 70 and they haven't had another head coach since Reagan was in office.
The Valley has strong basketball, but it's not top-to-bottom as it used to be. For the top of the league from this season, Indiana State is an unknown but Drake just hired the guy we all tried in vain to hire in Ben McCollum. I do not expect them to fall off. UNI is entrenched with a couple NCAA Tourney wins in the last decade (albeit almost a decade ago). SIU should hopefully get better with Nagy, Evansville is the MVC's version of Detroit Mercy and the newcomers are all still trying to get their feet wet (Murray State, Belmont, UIC and Valpo).
The conference tournament is superior in essentially every way. While the Horizon League tries to settle in at the Farmers Coliseum in Indy, the Enterprise Center (used to be Kiel Center) in St. Louis has been the home to Arch Madness for over 30 years. The conference tournament takes place over a weekend with its championship on national over-the-air television - CBS rather than ESPN. The MVC also makes some money with their television deal, although I don't think it's enough to really fund any of their programs.
What the MVC TV revenue DOES fund is also the thing that would probably be the most noticeable for Milwaukee fans. Referees in the MVC make considerably more than HL referees make. I don't know how much or if any overlap is there, but the MVC pays for a top tier class of referee and I sure would like to stop complaining about officiating so much.
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Rivalry: The loss of the home-and-home with Green Bay would be the biggest loss here. I've grown accustomed to hard-fought games with NKU and Oakland, and YSU's delayed ascension has finally made that a good game, but I think GB would be the only game I'd demand to be played every year if we were to move conferences. We have more historically bitter rivalries in the MVC with UIC and Valpo there, and it's likely that we'd be able to get ones going with UNI and Illinois State pretty quickly. We will IMMEDIATELY get sh*tty with Brian Wardle and Bradley (wink wink nudge nudge). I would miss certain HL rivalries but none of them except GB are irreplaceable.
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Sports: Would we need to add sports? The MVC sponsors softball as well, and that sport is pretty important to the conference.
__________________________________________________
Continuity: This right here is the thing that gives me more pause than anything else. Missouri State is leaving the MVC because they're trying to make it in football. Unless we're going to add football, this is nothing but a negative for us. Remaining MVFC (Missouri Valley Football Conference) schools in the MVC ar UNI, both ISU's, SIU and Murray State. That's five schools, four of whom are long-term MVC members. I think Murray State and Indiana State are not likely to move up to FBS (I-A) in a bid to get to the bigger money, but this is definitely a concern with Illinois State, Southern Illinois and Northern Iowa.
The NCAA recently waived their requirement for schools to average more than 15,000 fans per game to be in FBS. From what I gather, this is why a bunch of schools are making the jump. I don't think it's at all unlikely to see any or all three of those schools make the jump to Conference USA, the MAC or some other FBS conference.
Meanwhile, I've grown to appreciate what we have here. For better or worse, Milwaukee has been tied at the hip for 30 years to Green Bay, Cleveland State and Wright State. YSU is almost 25 years. Detroit Mercy is 30 years, although I think that's more their inability to fund their way out rather than any connection I feel to the program. Oakland and NKU are strong connections and similiar profiles. GB, CSU, WSU, Oakland and NKU don't play football. We're all urban public universities. The same is true for IU Indy and Purdue Fort Wayne, although I'm not sold on those schools being able to totally put it together in basketball.
I think when we think of moving to the Missouri Valley Conference, we're thinking of Ali Faroukhmanesh, Bradley in the Sweet 16, Creighton and Wichita State. This isn't the same conference, and it's likely that more dominoes will fall in the coming years.
Are we okay with a conference of Drake, Bradley, Valpo, UIC, Indiana State, Evansville, Murray State and Belmont? If Indiana State is able to recover from their coaching change it looks fairly enticing to me. On the other hand, UIC is the only school in that group that really resembles us. I will say that UIC is closer to us than any institution in the country, being the other public urban doctoral R1 research university on Lake Michigan. But that conference as a whole looks like one that teeters on the brink of breaking up entirely. There's very little continuity - Drake, Bradley, Indiana State and Evansville would be their sole members over 10 years in the conference - and there's no guarantee they even stick around. I think Drake and Bradley would be begging the A-10 for spots in that instance and I don't know if the A-10 says yes or no.
