(02-26-2018 12:20 PM)Attackcoog Wrote:  

(02-26-2018 12:00 PM)arkstfan Wrote:  I think Harry Minimum has reached the correct understanding. Whether he reached that conclusion on his own or after talking to ODU AD Wood Selig I will leave to the realm of speculation.

As George Bluth said, "There's always money in the banana stand". The banana stand for G5's is basketball.

You are guaranteed one unit per year from the NCAA, which means you always have at least six units. A unit was $266,000 last year. An at-large bid or a win in the tournament is worth that times six years. Almost $1.6 million over six years.

No you cannot guarantee yourself an at-large bid, the selection committee does what the committee does and that means sometimes a good RPI leaves you out.

But if you are fielding a good champion, you improve your chances that your auto bid holder will win a game and earn an additional unit for the next six years.

Play better hoops you can drive attendance up and increase TV value quality hoops has TV value.. Until a G5 picks up a check for TV that is larger than the Big East's the evidence is that

I see two things happening at the G5 level that make sense in terms of reorganization if G5 TV money is really gone.

1) Cut travel costs. The whole reason for large footprint leagues was TV money. Big footprints equaled large swaths of population which was to be converted into TV riches. If there isnt any TV money, then the old ancient pre-tv model of nearby low cost travel looks like it becomes the guiding force in building a league. It cuts costs, engages more rivalries because of familiarity, and it allows for easier fan road travel (hopefully resulting in higher ticket sales).

2) The best non-power basketball programs need to coalesce. The best non-power basketball programs can improve their schedule and RPI (and their ability to make the tournament) by grouping together. This has economic value as you indicated before by building teams that can win in the tournament (more credits) or by addint at large bids (even more credits). It may even have some TV value (see Big East). So, it may be worth expanding the footprint somewhat--so that one "picks and chooses" a conference that has a very strong basketball core---strong enough to attract a few key basketball only members to supercharge the league.

The current reward structures in both football and basketball combine to create lousy conference alignment options for anybody not in a power conference.

There is a fixed amount of money from the CFP revenues that is allocated to G5 conferences. Most of it goes to conference members rather than independents, so almost no one is willingly independent. Since the amount per conference is fixed, adding members beyond 10 just means everybody gets a smaller slice of the pie. And since the total pie is fixed in size, more, but smaller, conferences that make geographic sense hurts everybody.

In hoops, an 8 team one-bid conference earns twice as much per school as a 16 team one-bid conference. But even if it makes sense to have two 8 team conferences for every reason other than NCAAT payout, you can't split without half your members losing the one bid they can now compete for.

It is true for college sports as in life, that the love of money is the root of all evil. If it weren't for the perpetual money chase, college sports could be much more rational. But that chase will never end, so all we are left to do is gripe and shout "get off my lawn".