https://meangreennation.com/final-though...ournament/

Four days is enough to get a good feel for everything. Here are more detailed thoughts after about 100 conversations about it with various folks.

Nice report. Thanks

Thanks for sharing

Thanks for the blog.

My biggest complaint is that attendance will always be poor in this location. Unt, la tech, utsa, and rice are the schools that benefit from this location the most. All but la tech are also all in the bottom half of the league for basketball attendance...and they're 7th, which was one spot behind Charlotte in its worst season in 30+ years.

This championship game in Birmingham might have been a sellout with the look and feel of a major basketball conference. Instead it looked small time.

Serious western bias. It really is NOT the best location for all schools. Who gives a **** where the damned offices are? Let Judy get into her power wheels and drive to the airport and catch a flight.. B fkn S

(03-11-2018 03:33 PM)THUNDERGround Wrote:  Serious western bias. It really is NOT the best location for all schools. Who gives a **** where the damned offices are? Let Judy get into her power wheels and drive to the airport and catch a flight.. B fkn S

Unlike bowls which only give you 2-3 weeks to plan, you have a year in advance to plan for this event. DFW and Love Field offer multiple non stop flights to everywhere in the country and it’s not expensive to fight to/from. What’s the excuse? The bigger issue I have with this conference is not the venue but being a one bid league on a constant basis since the 2005-06 season. You can play the final in a packed arena in El Paso and Birmingham or in an empty venue in Frisco or Boca Raton and the outcome will still be the same. One bid league.

(03-11-2018 03:53 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  

(03-11-2018 03:33 PM)THUNDERGround Wrote:  Serious western bias. It really is NOT the best location for all schools. Who gives a **** where the damned offices are? Let Judy get into her power wheels and drive to the airport and catch a flight.. B fkn S

Unlike bowls which only give you 2-3 weeks to plan, you have a year in advance to plan for this event. DFW and Love Field offer multiple non stop flights to everywhere in the country and it’s not expensive to fight to/from. What’s the excuse? The bigger issue I have with this conference is not the venue but being a one bid league on a constant basis since the 2005-06 season. You can play the final in a packed arena in El Paso and Birmingham or in an empty venue in Frisco or Boca Raton and the outcome will still be the same. One bid league.

Nobody in this conference is going to book a basketball tournament a year in advance. People will book based on how their team is doing, so January at best for most people.

(03-11-2018 03:58 PM)Niner National Wrote:  

(03-11-2018 03:53 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  

(03-11-2018 03:33 PM)THUNDERGround Wrote:  Serious western bias. It really is NOT the best location for all schools. Who gives a **** where the damned offices are? Let Judy get into her power wheels and drive to the airport and catch a flight.. B fkn S

Unlike bowls which only give you 2-3 weeks to plan, you have a year in advance to plan for this event. DFW and Love Field offer multiple non stop flights to everywhere in the country and it’s not expensive to fight to/from. What’s the excuse? The bigger issue I have with this conference is not the venue but being a one bid league on a constant basis since the 2005-06 season. You can play the final in a packed arena in El Paso and Birmingham or in an empty venue in Frisco or Boca Raton and the outcome will still be the same. One bid league.

Nobody in this conference is going to book a basketball tournament a year in advance. People will book based on how their team is doing, so January at best for most people.

That’s still 2 months in advance. People will either go or not go. Unlike most P5 schools, we don’t have the T-shirt fans so we will always be in a disadvantaged position. If you want to see fan support, then it’s going to be between El Paso and Birmingham all the time. Probably Norfolk would support it.

I wouldn't mind seeing the league rotate the locations from Frisco to say, Charlotte every two years. Theoretically, it gives every basketball class at least two years of a 'home' venue with potential crowd support.

Until the average fan gets out and supports quality basketball -- and not necessarily only their team -- no place will be ideal.

(03-11-2018 03:53 PM)UTEPDallas Wrote:  

(03-11-2018 03:33 PM)THUNDERGround Wrote:  Serious western bias. It really is NOT the best location for all schools. Who gives a **** where the damned offices are? Let Judy get into her power wheels and drive to the airport and catch a flight.. B fkn S

Unlike bowls which only give you 2-3 weeks to plan, you have a year in advance to plan for this event. DFW and Love Field offer multiple non stop flights to everywhere in the country and it’s not expensive to fight to/from. What’s the excuse? The bigger issue I have with this conference is not the venue but being a one bid league on a constant basis since the 2005-06 season. You can play the final in a packed arena in El Paso and Birmingham or in an empty venue in Frisco or Boca Raton and the outcome will still be the same. One bid league.

The excuse is you are asking people to spend thousands to visit a suburban town and watch games in a football practice facility on makeshift bleachers while another game is going on behind a curtain. If I were single and we were in the midst of a magical season, I might do it and go alone, but it isn't going to be my family vacation. Last time I flew to Dallas for work, the flight was just under $300. Add the wife and kids, rental car for 4 days, lodging, eating out every meal and you are asking to spend about $2,500. Priorities.

Is it true that Frisco paid $0 for the tournament?

(03-10-2018 05:27 PM)MGNation Wrote:  https://meangreennation.com/final-though...ournament/

Four days is enough to get a good feel for everything. Here are more detailed thoughts after about 100 conversations about it with various folks.

I guess you didn't run into me. Here are my thoughts after a week in Frisco. Overall, I had a pleasant experience, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

Food & Shopping: While there are few options near the arena, if this tournament were to ever have a FULL house for the event, the limited number of restaraunts within walking distance would be woefully inadequate. Most of those restaraunts seemed surprised there was a tournament in the building (outside of the two sponsoring establishments). For example, the Subway was staffed by 1 person at lunchtime.

Hotels & Parking
The Hotels convenient to the site are expensive. Even the mentioned Holiday Inn Express was more per night than the full service Holiday Inn twenty minutes away in Garland. Let me add, those are 20 minutes of white knuckle stock car drafting on the tollways.

The free parking was a big positive. However you must have been in the blue lot if you were having to search for a space. The Silver lot was always less than 2/3's full, even on the day NTX, MTSU and WKU were all playing.

Ford Center & Views
One issue. Train your event staff. I can't stress this enough. Having people that check your tickets and deny access to the seating area you have a ticket for is inexcusible.

The bleacher seating was a joke. The institutional ticket (bench side) bleachers rise was so slight, you had to sit near the top to see the entire court. The view lower third of the bleachers was obstructed by anyone standing on the sidelines. The "rows" were actually comprised of individual plastic folding chairs zip-tied together.

The "expensive" ticket side was even worse. The rise of the bleachers was more standard, but the seating was simple wooden bleachers with out backs. Those would be bad enough for only one game, imagine having to deal with that for entire days of basketball, after forking over alot to purchase them.

One thing you didn't mention---The curtain. The curtain did curtail alot of noise from the other court, but definitely not all of it. I did see one player react to a whistle from the other court, but it did not affect play. One major issue, pep bands with electric guitars. The standard bands could definitely be heard from the opposite court, but those few with electic guitars vibrated the building from end to end. If this set up is to continue, electric assisted instruments need to be excluded. It was neet to be able to sit in the football seats at the end of the curtain and watch both games at once, though it was similar to watching a tennis match from the sidelines.

The video boards defintely need to be raised. They also must have smaller stat boards in the opposite corners of the court. Having the PA announcer announce how many team fouls and timeouts remaining reminded me of a church league. Also, would it be too difficult to announce the score from the other court periodically?

And for Conference named USA, I only heard the national athem once...before the women's championship game.

Spectacle

The "fun" stuff out front was a nice touch. Too bad there weren't many attending that were of the age group in attendance that those activities were targeting. I was disappointed I didn't see Judy lined up at the "50" in her battery powered Jeep. FWIW, I did see her rushing out of Raising Cane's after her daily free box lunch. (Oh yeah, I forgot you got a free box lunch with every single session ticket purchased at the ticket window)

The tournament was a much of a success as it could be or ever will be until this conference takes basketball seriously. The attendees we basically only the true hard core fans of the visiting schools, fans and curious folks from UNT and elementary school kids they bused in to pump up attendance numbers (Bham got raked over the coals for that, funny that in Frisco it went un-noticed).

If this is the best C-USA can do, perhaps it is time to move the early rounds to campus sites. If those first two rounds even drew as little as 2,000 avg.on campuses, the total numbers of tickets sold would dwarf the numbers at this year's single site tournament.

Tupelo Honey used to be so good when it was just the Asheville location...what a shame.

(03-13-2018 04:21 PM)blazerjay Wrote:  

(03-10-2018 05:27 PM)MGNation Wrote:  https://meangreennation.com/final-though...ournament/

Four days is enough to get a good feel for everything. Here are more detailed thoughts after about 100 conversations about it with various folks.

I guess you didn't run into me. Here are my thoughts after a week in Frisco. Overall, I had a pleasant experience, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

Food & Shopping: While there are few options near the arena, if this tournament were to ever have a FULL house for the event, the limited number of restaraunts within walking distance would be woefully inadequate. Most of those restaraunts seemed surprised there was a tournament in the building (outside of the two sponsoring establishments). For example, the Subway was staffed by 1 person at lunchtime.

[b]Hotels & Parking
The Hotels convenient to the site are expensive. Even the mentioned Holiday Inn Express was more per night than the full service Holiday Inn twenty minutes away in Garland. Let me add, those are 20 minutes of white knuckle stock car drafting on the tollways.[/b]

The free parking was a big positive. However you must have been in the blue lot if you were having to search for a space. The Silver lot was always less than 2/3's full, even on the day NTX, MTSU and WKU were all playing.

I take it you don'y have experience actually shopping for a hotel?

We could have stayed connected to the Ford Center at Omni Frisco Hotel for $115

We decided to stay at the Hotel Indigo - Frisco and moved on Friday because out plan was to start driving back if Western lost.

I know this doesn't compare to the $94 a night Days Inn we got around 8 miles from the arena in B'ham : but we made do with it for $65 a night. As you can see in the capture it says stay again now its $67. Same hotel the Rice team stayed in and it's new, opened in Dec. and 3/4 a mile from the arena. I counted 7 hotels with in a mile of the arena

This type of hotel would have cost us $200 a night in B'ham



We moved about 9 miles away on Friday but unlike you....I didn't see all of those crazy driving. Hell we took the Dallas Highway (free) and it took 12 minutes to get to the arena. Again we stayed at a hotel that would have cost $200+ in B'ham for $66

Sheraton Mckinney Hotel





Anyone complaining about the road system in this area is just looking for something to complain about. Either that or they are use to 2 lane 25 mph driving.

We have drove over most of this country east of Texas and I have to say that I was impressed with how good and how new the highway and toll system was in this area. That even goes for the free highway system that parallels the toll roads.

The only time we fought heavy slow traffic was driving into Dallas

People have different opinion and I said before the tourney I was going to give it a chance. I enjoyed myself.....

other than too many 28 ft 3 pointers and a floater that went in and out and around the rim and a tip that was a hair short

People need to learn how to shop for the tourney....Hotels don't have to break the bank. You go to price line and check their express deals. Then you cross check hotels in that arena that meets the rating and the number of reviews and what you searched for...free Internet, pool, those type things. Usually you can pinpoint it to two hotels and 80% of the time to the exact hotel you are getting....saving up to 67%

We travel a lot and I never got a bad hotel doing this

(03-13-2018 05:38 PM)WKUYG Wrote:  

(03-13-2018 04:21 PM)blazerjay Wrote:  

(03-10-2018 05:27 PM)MGNation Wrote:  https://meangreennation.com/final-though...ournament/

Four days is enough to get a good feel for everything. Here are more detailed thoughts after about 100 conversations about it with various folks.

I guess you didn't run into me. Here are my thoughts after a week in Frisco. Overall, I had a pleasant experience, but there is a lot of room for improvement.

Food & Shopping: While there are few options near the arena, if this tournament were to ever have a FULL house for the event, the limited number of restaraunts within walking distance would be woefully inadequate. Most of those restaraunts seemed surprised there was a tournament in the building (outside of the two sponsoring establishments). For example, the Subway was staffed by 1 person at lunchtime.

[b]Hotels & Parking
The Hotels convenient to the site are expensive. Even the mentioned Holiday Inn Express was more per night than the full service Holiday Inn twenty minutes away in Garland. Let me add, those are 20 minutes of white knuckle stock car drafting on the tollways.[/b]

The free parking was a big positive. However you must have been in the blue lot if you were having to search for a space. The Silver lot was always less than 2/3's full, even on the day NTX, MTSU and WKU were all playing.

I take it you don'y have experience actually shopping for a hotel?

We could have stayed connected to the Ford Center at Omni Frisco Hotel for $115

We decided to stay at the Hotel Indigo - Frisco and moved on Friday because out plan was to start driving back if Western lost.

I know this doesn't compare to the $94 a night Days Inn we got around 8 miles from the arena in B'ham : but we made do with it for $65 a night. As you can see in the capture it says stay again now its $67. Same hotel the Rice team stayed in and it's new, opened in Dec. and 3/4 a mile from the arena. I counted 7 hotels with in a mile of the arena

This type of hotel would have cost us $200 a night in B'ham



We moved about 9 miles away on Friday but unlike you....I didn't see all of those crazy driving. Hell we took the Dallas Highway (free) and it took 12 minutes to get to the arena. Again we stayed at a hotel that would have cost $200+ in B'ham for $66

Sheraton Mckinney Hotel





Anyone complaining about the road system in this area is just looking for something to complain about. Either that or they are use to 2 lane 25 mph driving.

We have drove over most of this country east of Texas and I have to say that I was impressed with how good and how new the highway and toll system was in this area. That even goes for the free highway system that parallels the toll roads.

The only time we fought heavy slow traffic was driving into Dallas

People have different opinion and I said before the tourney I was going to give it a chance. I enjoyed myself.....

other than too many 28 ft 3 pointers and a floater that went in and out and around the rim and a tip that was a hair short

People need to learn how to shop for the tourney....Hotels don't have to break the bank. You go to price line and check their express deals. Then you cross check hotels in that arena that meets the rating and the number of reviews and what you searched for...free Internet, pool, those type things. Usually you can pinpoint it to two hotels and 80% of the time to the exact hotel you are getting....saving up to 67%

We travel a lot and I never got a bad hotel doing this

Wow those are great rates especially for the Omni. Thanks for your unbiased view, the fans I have spoken echo your sentiment, much better, safer and nicer area than the B'hma tourney

(03-10-2018 05:27 PM)MGNation Wrote:  https://meangreennation.com/final-though...ournament/

Four days is enough to get a good feel for everything. Here are more detailed thoughts after about 100 conversations about it with various folks.

"Hoops At The Star was a success. Next season should be even better."

I agree. 100% better than Birmingham according to fans from different schools.

(03-13-2018 06:14 PM)Dawgxas Wrote:  

(03-10-2018 05:27 PM)MGNation Wrote:  https://meangreennation.com/final-though...ournament/

Four days is enough to get a good feel for everything. Here are more detailed thoughts after about 100 conversations about it with various folks.

I agree. 100% better than Birmingham according to fans from different schools.

And there were so few there, you could have asked each of them individually.

(03-13-2018 08:57 PM)Niner National Wrote:  

(03-13-2018 06:14 PM)Dawgxas Wrote:  

(03-10-2018 05:27 PM)MGNation Wrote:  https://meangreennation.com/final-though...ournament/

Four days is enough to get a good feel for everything. Here are more detailed thoughts after about 100 conversations about it with various folks.

I agree. 100% better than Birmingham according to fans from different schools.

And there were so few there, you could have asked each of them individually.

Haha.

I think we all want a big spectacle of a tournament but no venue is going to bring that in. Not for these teams. For me, I'm hoping for a fun week where I get to watch some basketball and hopefully see my team make a run. I do appreciate everyone's reading the post.

We are doing another CUSA-centric site (https://cusareport.com) . I know at least some of you have perused it. We covered a little basketball during the season but posted (and tweeted) more during the tournament (@cusareport)

The plan is to add a podcast - right now I produce the meangreennation podcast and used to do the CokerChronicles one back in the day - and add some more contributors.

Thanks again y'all.

What locations would be better for more of the schools?