Not only a lot of travel, but no real good way to make this work for TV and fans. If you're Providence, do you want to go to the West Coast for a game that tips off at 10 p.m. for your home fans? If you're Oregon and hosting Providence, are you willing to have a 5 p.m. start? College basketball is a TV sport, and very little about a coastal series makes sense for mid-week TV.Originally Posted by sancho
These sound like obstacles that can be overcome.
It will probably not ever make TV revenue like the ACC/BigTen Challenge, but it will certainly make more than Utah/High Point. These games replace garbage. Fans would certainly prefer an odd hour vs a good team over a normal hour vs a filler. Fox and ESPN are desperate for decent college basketball content in early December.
Besides, revenue in this case is a bonus. You do this primarily for scheduling competitiveness - for the committee. They say scheduling is hard. This gives a handful good games automatically. It takes the challenge away from the ADs/coaches (and it takes the decisions out of their hands, too).
The marquee game each year could be played in MSG. Players seem to get a kick out of that, so it would add another small recruiting chip for the best Pac-12 teams.
This should have happened years ago. If it had, the Pac-12 would have had extra games this season against Villanova, Seton Hall, Xavier, Providence, Creighton, and Butler - all tournament teams.
Some interesting scheduling news starting to trickle out in college hoops - none of it Utah related, yet. St. Marys and Creighton I believe have agreed to a neutral site game. Butler and Florida are playing a home and home, and I think Oklahoma just agreed to a H/H with somebody...might have been Creighton as well. UNC has started doing 2 for 1s with in state schools and will travel to Wofford this next year, and UNC Wilmington (I think) the following season.
Which makes me wonder...how many of the in-state schools would be down with a 2 for 1 with Utah. I would imagine Southern Utah would do it in a heartbeat, and Weber possibly would too. Even UVU might do that just to get the home game. Now, as I've stated before, I think Larry should be taking his team on the road in the OOC more anyway, but these 2 for 1s might be a great way to start doing that. Likewise, outside of the beehive classic, I wonder if a team would be more likely to come to SLC if they played in Vivint instead of in the JMHC.
“It only ends once. Anything that happens before that is just progress.”
Well, because he thought it was good sport. Because some men aren't looking for anything logical, like money. They can't be bought, bullied, reasoned, or negotiated with. Some men just want to watch the world burn.
A part of me thinks the in state schools would do a 2 for 1. Weber, UVU, Utah State would all be fun.
But it a part of me thinks that the other schools are still hurt over Utah moving onwards and upwards and wouldn’t agree to a 2 for 1. Also, if you are doing 2 for 1’s with all the other in state schools, then BYU really has no argument to playing them 2 for 1. It’s just standard policy. Plus, it’s not like they are a good program anyways.
Now it would be a good time to play USU and just crush them.
We should never want to go to Cedar City when we've got Ogden nearby. SUU is the one school I would never want to see us work out a series that has us going down there. All the others are definitely in play -- even UVU. But Utah State will never agree to it, and Weber is iffy.
in related news Wilner graded the Pac-12 schools OOC football schedule over the next 5 years.
Utah graded out a 'D'
He's right. It's not a good schedule. You can still argue that it's a good strategy, though. We've had that debate.
I agree its a good strategy for football. The PAC-12 is difficult enough with 9 conference games that the OOC schedule is essentially irrelevant. Typically, that's true of OOC scheduling for PAC-12 basketball. The conference schedule should prove difficult enough that Utah shouldn't need to over-schedule. With 2 more basketball conference games added next year, I wonder what the impact will be?
He is right. The real head scratcher for me is Northern Illinois. I understand that they have had good teams in the past and that they could have a good team again this year, but it isn't in a recruiting area for us or in an area of heavy alumni base.
True. The worst teams to schedule are cream-puff reputations that are legitimately good (No. Illinois, App. State, etc). If you are going to schedule crap, it better really stink.
That being said, I think I'll make the trip to DeKalb!
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