A-10 Schedule Proposal

[CT Rhody]

What happened to St Bonaventure last year should become a wakeup call to the A-10 on how they schedule games. The weakness of the A-10 is the bottom feeder teams and sometimes programs in general. When individuals from outside the conference review conference records, they always mention the unbalanced schedule and how 5-6 of those wins are against sub 150 teams.

I continue to harp on how the league needs to continue to stay ahead of the curve with innovative ways to manage its conference and maximize its strength. Here I want to open a discussion about A-10 scheduling and how to maximize its annual NCAA bids.

I propose moving to a 14/4 scheduling format. I’ll provide the outline as the inner workers can easily be altered to add even more drama and excitement. The idea behind this scheduling proposal is to provide better RPI games to the teams striving for the tournament who have to compete against other power conference teams RPI’s to make it into the big dance. The conference would be split into a 1 and 1A conference format with 8 teams in each “pod”. The proposal goes along with adding two more schools to the conference (Wichita State and Northern Iowa anybody? Sienna brings additional value to the conference as well). Each school would play everybody in their “pod” home and away for a total of 14 games. Then you would cross over and play 4 games against the other pod.
This would take a team like Dayton for example, and provide them 14 games against the top half of the conference, providing a potential strong RPI game in all 14 of those matchups. Then the other four games are strong “win” opportunities that shouldn’t hurt the RPI that much since the total is limited. For the lower half of the league, it would provide teams like Fordham, Duquesne, GM, etc opportunities for more games against teams on their level to increase their win count and confidence within their student athletes. It would also provide them 4 games against the top half of the conference to keep interest and ticket sales moving along with challenging themselves.

I would suggest the top six and bottom six teams get locked in going into the season, around the time the conference rolls out the schedule now. This would be one of the only ways not to drastically effect the schedule rollout timing. The four teams in the middle would be ranked 1 through 4 with 1 playing 4 and 2 playing 3 in late December to determine who will be playing in what “pod”. The home team wouldn’t be determined until early December and it will be based on the lower RPI schools gets the home game. Since the league knows the two matchups in December going into the season, those schools could still roll out their A-10 home and away schedule but just won’t have the opponent determined until after that game. This would create great intrigue within the league and I would think TV partners would want those two games on their channels. In short, this would allow ten teams going into the season a chance to play in the “A” pot.

Pro’s:
- Better average RPI games for the top half of the league
- Better TV matchups for our television partners, increasing the value the conference provides
- Should increase NCAA bids for the conference
- Should increase tickets sales as this would provide better matchups nightly
- Provides the bottom teams something to strive for

Cons:
- Takes a team that isn’t projected as a top 10 in the league and automatically places them in the bottom tier, limiting their opportunities for better matchups throughout conference play outside of the four cross over matchups. Davidson two years ago anybody?

Thoughts?

[RhowdyRam02]

Honestly I don't like it. First of all, that December mini tournament isn't at all practical for scheduling or selling tickets, so it will end up being a disaster if implemented.

Also, you're disqualifying half of the conference from an NCAA tournament bid before the season starts. Even if a team goes on a great run like Davidson, if they're in the bottom half the committee would just look at their resume and say they played in the JV A10 and they'd be eliminated immediately. Making it so half the conference plays garbage teams night in and night out with no chance of making the tournament seems like a good way of making sure teams in the bottom half never get better because their fan bases would plummet and they'd have minimal TV revenue under your plan, so they could never make further investments to improve.

And finally, how do you determine who the bottom half teams are? RPI from the year before? That's a flawed measure. Based on RPI we'd probably be in the bottom half this coming year because our best player was done for the year 9 minutes in last year and St. Joe's would be in the top half because they had an NBA player who's not with them anymore. Standings? A lot of the same problems. You're better off just figuring out a way of giving teams the boot to get down to or closer to 10 teams then doing this.

[CT Rhody]

Another proposal without expansion required would be to move to a 9/5 schedule. The preseason top 9 teams would play each other home and away for a total of 16 game. The bottom five would play each other home and away for a total of 8 games. The top 9 teams would play 2 games each against the bottom 5 and the bottom 5 would play 8 games each against the top 9. This alleviates almost all the issues from the top scheduling proposal.

If you took the 2015 RPI numbers for example, the league average was 118. The top 9 average was 71. This would increase the average RPI opponent for the top 9 by 47 slots, dramatically helping the top 9's RPI. It would also allow the bottom 5 teams 8 opportunities against the top 9 which is significantly more then the four opportunities on the first proposal.

What are the downside of this proposal?

[CT Rhody]

Honestly I don't like it. First of all, that December mini tournament isn't at all practical for scheduling or selling tickets, so it will end up being a disaster if implemented.

Also, you're disqualifying half of the conference from an NCAA tournament bid before the season starts. Even if a team goes on a great run like Davidson, if they're in the bottom half the committee would just look at their resume and say they played in the JV A10 and they'd be eliminated immediately. Making it so half the conference plays garbage teams night in and night out with no chance of making the tournament seems like a good way of making sure teams in the bottom half never get better because their fan bases would plummet and they'd have minimal TV revenue under your plan, so they could never make further investments to improve.

And finally, how do you determine who the bottom half teams are? RPI from the year before? That's a flawed measure. Based on RPI we'd probably be in the bottom half this coming year because our best player was done for the year 9 minutes in last year and St. Joe's would be in the top half because they had an NBA player who's not with them anymore. Standings? A lot of the same problems. You're better off just figuring out a way of giving teams the boot to get down to or closer to 10 teams then doing this.

I have many of the same fears as you do, I made another proposal above that I think alleviates some of your concerns.

[josephski]

Another proposal without expansion required would be to move to a 9/5 schedule. The preseason top 9 teams would play each other home and away for a total of 16 game. The bottom five would play each other home and away for a total of 8 games. The top 9 teams would play 2 games each against the bottom 5 and the bottom 5 would play 8 games each against the top 9. This alleviates almost all the issues from the top scheduling proposal.

If you took the 2015 RPI numbers for example, the league average was 118. The top 9 average was 71. This would increase the average RPI opponent for the top 9 by 47 slots, dramatically helping the top 9's RPI. It would also allow the bottom 5 teams 8 opportunities against the top 9 which is significantly more then the four opportunities on the first proposal.

What are the downside of this proposal?

The major downside is that there's so much movement in college basketball and a team can go from being very good to pretty bad or vice versa within a year. RhodyRam made a good point about us and St Joe's but you can also look at teams like LaSalle and Umass. They both finished bottom 5 last year but I'd be willing to bet both teams will finish top 9 this year.

I do like the idea but most teams in the a10 just aren't consistent enough were you can rank their next season based on their performance the prior season.

[rjsuperfly66]

I think there are two simple fixes instead of some of these crazy proposals:

1) Rank the teams 1-14 preseason. It's a guess. But lets say the conference thinks URI is 1 and Dayton is 2, make sure every team plays one of them at home and one of them away. 3 and 4, same thing. Because if you play 1 and 2 at home and 3 and 4 on the road, 1 and 2 may have Top 40 RPI's and 3-4 might barely be Top 60 and you lose a marquee road game. I think the conference for the most part does a decent job thanks to the home-and-homes but something to think about.

2) To take that one step further, I would use those projections to pod teams for home and home. Figure out a balance so that for the most part, your top 5 programs preseason play eachother 2-3 times and play no one you think will be worse than 10 2 times. Creates some inbalance but even if you project 6-10, you'll still get home and home cracks at top teams.

Reality is you need to play some bad teams in conference play to help boost conference records. If you make the top 7 teams beat up on each other, they might all finish 9-9 and it'll place a bigger emphasis on OOC to differentiate the tourney teams, IMHO.

[NYGFan_Section208]

Can't see how it's at all fair to stack schedules based on pre-season ranking...regardless of the 'formula'... Who's rankings do you use anyway? Mine? Yours? His? And, isn't everyone 'supposed to' have a theoretically equal shot out of the box?

My opinion, but I hope nothing like this ever happens. Imagine the outcry (and possible loss of revenue) if Rhody were slotted in the bottom half of something like that...even if it were justified by the proposal. Starting off the year with an intentional schedule deficit....can't see that being good for anyone.

[rjsuperfly66]

Can't see how it's at all fair to stack schedules based on pre-season ranking...regardless of the 'formula'... Who's rankings do you use anyway? Mine? Yours? His? And, isn't everyone 'supposed to' have a theoretically equal shot out of the box?

My opinion, but I hope nothing like this ever happens. Imagine the outcry (and possible loss of revenue) if Rhody were slotted in the bottom half of something like that...even if it were justified by the proposal. Starting off the year with an intentional schedule deficit....can't see that being good for anyone.

I believe some conferences have used the previous year standings to rank teams. The only time that comes into account is the home-and-homes of which there are 5. To keep it fair, every team still has to play every one once, but teams that should have higher expectations will receive what should be slightly tougher 2nd games. It doesn't necessarily account for changing rosters but at least is an unbiased metric. But you are right, it's hard to project the season in May/June, injuries could happen, some players could develop more than others, etc. But I think for the most part, the good teams have been consistently good for a few years, the bad teams have been consistently bad for a few years, and everyone else falls somewhat in the middle.

[CT Rhody]

Can't see how it's at all fair to stack schedules based on pre-season ranking...regardless of the 'formula'... Who's rankings do you use anyway? Mine? Yours? His? And, isn't everyone 'supposed to' have a theoretically equal shot out of the box?

My opinion, but I hope nothing like this ever happens. Imagine the outcry (and possible loss of revenue) if Rhody were slotted in the bottom half of something like that...even if it were justified by the proposal. Starting off the year with an intentional schedule deficit....can't see that being good for anyone.

In the second scenario, the five teams placed in the bottom tier would still get 8 games against the top nine teams, so why would their be an outcry exactly?

[luke]

I think what happened to the Bonnies had nothing to do with their scheduling. It had everything to do
with perceptions of the A 10 and lesser name schools as a whole, and also the bigger schools and their
representatives trying to protect what they perceive as their turf ( Meaning the Tournament) and
their reputations as a whole. As was demonstrated, RPI doesn't matter except to penalize smaller
name schools or reward a big name school. When they want to put in a big name school with a poor RPI
they say well they beat so and so,and put them in. When a team like Dayton goes into the Dance and
consistently bursts their bubble, they don't like it. They don't like giving schools like St. Bonaventure the
chance to do the same. That's why they don't want to play them during the season because it exposes
the myth that the Big 10, The SEC the Pack 12 and the other so called Power 5 conferences are far superior.
it used to be called the Power 6 conferences until the A 10 posted the sixth best RPI for a couple seasons.
The whole selection system is a fraud. If they wanted to be fair they would eliminate seeding as well and
make seeding random and maybe have138 teams in the field, but that would drive the big boys crazy and
put too much pressure on them to prove their superiority.

[CT Rhody]

I think what happened to the Bonnies had nothing to do with their scheduling. It had everything to do
with perceptions of the A 10 and lesser name schools as a whole, and also the bigger schools and their
representatives trying to protect what they perceive as their turf ( Meaning the Tournament) and
their reputations as a whole. As was demonstrated, RPI doesn't matter except to penalize smaller
name schools or reward a big name school. When they want to put in a big name school with a poor RPI
they say well they beat so and so,and put them in. When a team like Dayton goes into the Dance and
consistently bursts their bubble, they don't like it. They don't like giving schools like St. Bonaventure the
chance to do the same. That's why they don't want to play them during the season because it exposes
the myth that the Big 10, The SEC the Pack 12 and the other so called Power 5 conferences are far superior.
it used to be called the Power 6 conferences until the A 10 posted the sixth best RPI for a couple seasons.
The whole selection system is a fraud. If they wanted to be fair they would eliminate seeding as well and
make seeding random and maybe have138 teams in the field, but that would drive the big boys crazy and
put too much pressure on them to prove their superiority.

Luke - I agree the lesser name schools and the programs not putting the resources into their programs in order to compete at an elite level is hurting the conference as a whole. You could argue that's why the Big East Seven didn't want to merge with the A-10 in the first place. That and of course the 500 million reasons Fox provided. Since the A-10 won't just throw universities out of the conference for obvious reasons, the next best thing is to incentivize them to put the necessary resources into the basketball programs. That's why I think my 9/5 schedule is a must and is a fair way to go. We could debate how to rank the programs going into a season all day but put a bunch of smart and fair people in a room and we can def come up with a way that would work.

[rjsuperfly66]

CT Rhody,
I don't believe the math of your proposal works.
If each of the 9 played a home and home, that would give each team 16 games, leaving them 2 games each against the bottom 5, which would equate to 18 remaining games combined between the teams.
However in your proposal, the bottom 5 would play 8 games against the top 9, giving them 40 remaining games to be spread among the top 9.
You've overschedulded by 22 games in that scenario.
Furthermore in your scenario, the 9 play 18 conference games, and the 5 play 16 conference games.
I get the attempt, it's very complicated with 14 teams.
You could do something like a 7/7, where the top 7 have 4 home and homes against top 7 teams and 1 against bottom 7 teams.

[CT Rhody]

CT Rhody,
I don't believe the math of your proposal works.
If each of the 9 played a home and home, that would give each team 16 games, leaving them 2 games each against the bottom 5, which would equate to 18 remaining games combined between the teams.
However in your proposal, the bottom 5 would play 8 games against the top 9, giving them 40 remaining games to be spread among the top 9.
You've overschedulded by 22 games in that scenario.
Furthermore in your scenario, the 9 play 18 conference games, and the 5 play 16 conference games.
I get the attempt, it's very complicated with 14 teams.
You could do something like a 7/7, where the top 7 have 4 home and homes against top 7 teams and 1 against bottom 7 teams.

Good point, I think people understood what I was driving at though. The conference needs to keep the top teams happy since the bottoms aren't trying to compete at that level.

Quick adjustment - Top 5 play 14 games against the projected top 9, projected teams 6-9 play 13 games against the top 9 and one game each against the bottom 5. That format would work.

[Blue Man]

While the concerns are real for scheduling, I think the problem is being discussed incorrectly. It's actually quite an easy fix.

As long as the A10 continues to have Fordham, Duquesne, and George Mason at the bottom; you can't have teams play them twice. While other teams oscillate from the 65-175 range over the years, you can count on those 3 to be well outside of the top 150, if not 250. That's anywhere from 4-6 games outside of the top 150. That can kill a team's RPI.

The A10 needs to go back to a smaller in-conference schedule to allow teams to get their better games out of conference.

Whether that means play everyone once (13 games), once with a paired rival (14), or 2 paired rivals (15) - while making those traditional teams of suck be paired rivals which would make sense.

Whether you do it based on last year's standings, a consensus of traditional conference powers, or a straw poll of consensus next season rankings; at least you minimize the in conference damage by our lower level teams.

Should those teams ever get good enough to make a run - an extra one or two games wouldn't kill them, while at the same time the St Bonaventures who get into a bubble situation won't have those 4-6 terrible RPI matchups bringing them down.

Our top 5 teams can hang with any other conferences top 5 teams, the difference is that our elite teams can't quite match the elite teams of the power 5, and our bottom teams are TERRIBLE.

You have to find a way to mitigate the bottom's affect on everyone else.

[rjsuperfly66]

I think the only problem with your proposal Blue Man, is that you are proposing that the A10 cut conference games, but many conferenences (especially P5 ones) may be moving towards a system of increasing conference games. Already the ACC has a plan for 20 conference games in 2019, who knows the next shoe to drop there. If more conferences are cutting out of conference games, a plan for the A10 to add OOC games wouldn't seem to make much sense. Already you can argue that many teams are having a tough time filling their schedule with quality OOC opponents. Many programs are struggling to find open games with teams you hope will have an RPI under 150, which is far from stellar. Would the net gain of cutting conference games, even say to 16, significantly impact the RPI over the course of a season?

[CT Rhody]

I agree, we can't fill out OOC as it is let alone adding more of them. We need a system that fairly distributes the schedule to align with a squads ambitions. Multiple ways to do that but the leagues need to be at the forefront of that innovative scheduling technique and its needs it soon to keep up.

[rjsuperfly66]

I think the reality of this though is that teams will be reluctant for a top-heavy format because there will always be teams or programs that feel left out. Whether the reponse is "You sucked last year" or "We think you will suck this year," there will always be a team or two or five who thinks the system was rigged against them. What if for instance, they came up with a 6/8 system, where the top 6 teams from last season all played their home and homes against eachother, so Dayton would play VCU, St. Bonaventure, St. Joseph's, George Washington, and Davidson, and URI finished 7th so they had home and homes against some combination of Fordham, UMASS, Duquense, George Mason, and St. Louis? I would be apoplectic at that system, but in reality, the only fair way to judge where teams belong is from a consistent structure, such as previous years standings. Otherwise, it's arbitrary and potentially biased. And in this scenario, URI gets screwed because they have a NCAA-caliber team but because of top-heavy scheduling they get a terrible conference draw with maybe 2 or 3 NCAA opponent games, a metric that would murder them on Selection Sunday.

[CT Rhody]

I think the reality of this though is that teams will be reluctant for a top-heavy format because there will always be teams or programs that feel left out. Whether the reponse is "You sucked last year" or "We think you will suck this year," there will always be a team or two or five who thinks the system was rigged against them. What if for instance, they came up with a 6/8 system, where the top 6 teams from last season all played their home and homes against eachother, so Dayton would play VCU, St. Bonaventure, St. Joseph's, George Washington, and Davidson, and URI finished 7th so they had home and homes against some combination of Fordham, UMASS, Duquense, George Mason, and St. Louis? I would be apoplectic at that system, but in reality, the only fair way to judge where teams belong is from a consistent structure, such as previous years standings. Otherwise, it's arbitrary and potentially biased. And in this scenario, URI gets screwed because they have a NCAA-caliber team but because of top-heavy scheduling they get a terrible conference draw with maybe 2 or 3 NCAA opponent games, a metric that would murder them on Selection Sunday.

What scheduling format is proposed, it needs to first develop a fair mechanism in place to put teams in their appropriately place +/- a couple of spots. What they could do is start slow with a slight slant towards developing a schedule were the projected higher teams play 1 less games against the bottom dwellers. And after seeing how that works, slowly ramp it up as the comfort level with the system begins to take shape. These top programs want to move to the Big East for the money, the least the league can do is try to do everything they can to maximize their changes for an NCAA bid. Why are we so concerned with keeping the Fordhams, Duquesne's, and George Mason's of the world completely happy? Are we a basketball first league or not? Decisions have to be made, those who sit pat tend to lose in this fluid landscape of college athletics.

[adam914]

The one major issue I see with this type of scheduling talk is that I keep seeing the names Fordham, George Mason, Duquesne, etc. mentioned but we need to remember that in the very recent past we would have been lumped right in with them. So it could easily become a "careful what you wish for" type scenario here.

[rjsuperfly66]

Why are we so concerned with keeping the Fordhams, Duquesne's, and George Mason's of the world completely happy? Are we a basketball first league or not? Decisions have to be made, those who sit pat tend to lose in this fluid landscape of college athletics.

If it were me, I wouldn't be worried about those three teams, but the reality is there is no scenario that is going to favor 11 teams and say screw the other 3 ... If a system is set up to reward the top teams, it's going to be 6-8 in that top pod of "NCAA caliber teams," and if it were me, I'd want that pod to be smaller than bigger. So if you have 6 teams facing each other, there are 8 teams who are hurt by it, not just 3. Would you as a fan of URI be happy about a setup for the good of the conference, if one year your 5 home and homes consisted of George Mason, Duquesne, Fordham, St. Louis, and LaSalle?

The system probably doesn't need a drastic tweak, but there may be a small one to be amde. If you look at Dayton, the #1 team in the A10 last year, they didn't really need the help, but their 5 "home and homes" were against teams that finished the following in the standings: 3, 7, 11, 13, 14.

[ramster]

The one major issue I see with this type of scheduling talk is that I keep seeing the names Fordham, George Mason, Duquesne, etc. mentioned but we need to remember that in the very recent past we would have been lumped right in with them. So it could easily become a "careful what you wish for" type scenario here.

Absolutely,
and maybe being right there with them is kind with seasons or only 7 and 8 total wins

[CT Rhody]

The one major issue I see with this type of scheduling talk is that I keep seeing the names Fordham, George Mason, Duquesne, etc. mentioned but we need to remember that in the very recent past we would have been lumped right in with them. So it could easily become a "careful what you wish for" type scenario here.

I was looking at it from the best interest of the conference as a whole and not URI perspective. If URI doesn't allocate the necessary resources to compete at the elite level, then we should be lump in with our peers wherever that may be. I have no problem with that. Then it's up to the school and the program to "earn" there way back up the conference landscape.

[CT Rhody]

Why are we so concerned with keeping the Fordhams, Duquesne's, and George Mason's of the world completely happy? Are we a basketball first league or not? Decisions have to be made, those who sit pat tend to lose in this fluid landscape of college athletics.

If it were me, I wouldn't be worried about those three teams, but the reality is there is no scenario that is going to favor 11 teams and say screw the other 3 ... If a system is set up to reward the top teams, it's going to be 6-8 in that top pod of "NCAA caliber teams," and if it were me, I'd want that pod to be smaller than bigger. So if you have 6 teams facing each other, there are 8 teams who are hurt by it, not just 3. Would you as a fan of URI be happy about a setup for the good of the conference, if one year your 5 home and homes consisted of George Mason, Duquesne, Fordham, St. Louis, and LaSalle?

The system probably doesn't need a drastic tweak, but there may be a small one to be amde. If you look at Dayton, the #1 team in the A10 last year, they didn't really need the help, but their 5 "home and homes" were against teams that finished the following in the standings: 3, 7, 11, 13, 14.

Agreed, make one slight tweak now to improve the in conference RPI of your top teams and continue to tweak as necessary. Hopefully St Louis should be getting out of the basement tier next year but are the three others on any kind of upward trajectory path? Sustained basement dwellers should be playing each other home and away especially if we are down to only 3 of them until they earn their way back up to the middle of the pack.

[RhowdyRam02]

You keep saying until a team earns their way up, but what you ignore is your system makes it almost impossible for those teams to do. If their schedules are weak with virtually no chance to make the NCAA's before the season even starts then ticket sales are down, your idea has them getting less TV revenue and you're killing their recruiting. With lower revenue they can't make facility or coaching improvements, and with poor recruiting they'll never be able to compete.

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but your idea doesn't work, on a few different levels and no amount of tweaking will fix some of those issues.

[CT Rhody]

You keep saying until a team earns their way up, but what you ignore is your system makes it almost impossible for those teams to do. If their schedules are weak with virtually no chance to make the NCAA's before the season even starts then ticket sales are down, your idea has them getting less TV revenue and you're killing their recruiting. With lower revenue they can't make facility or coaching improvements, and with poor recruiting they'll never be able to compete.

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but your idea doesn't work, on a few different levels and no amount of tweaking will fix some of those issues.

Has not tweaking the schedule and equal payout of TV revenues helped Fordham and Duquesne at all to date? At some point you need to incentivize schools to appropriate more resources into their programs in order to lift all boats. I see what your saying but I don't see how the status queue will help move this league to the next level. I'm curious though, what strategic moves would you have the conference do in order to get on level ground as the big least?

[adam914]

The one major issue I see with this type of scheduling talk is that I keep seeing the names Fordham, George Mason, Duquesne, etc. mentioned but we need to remember that in the very recent past we would have been lumped right in with them. So it could easily become a "careful what you wish for" type scenario here.

I was looking at it from the best interest of the conference as a whole and not URI perspective. If URI doesn't allocate the necessary resources to compete at the elite level, then we should be lump in with our peers wherever that may be. I have no problem with that. Then it's up to the school and the program to "earn" there way back up the conference landscape.

Ok fair enough, yeah I totally agree with you there then, I was worried people were only looking at it from the perspective of the last couple years and/or where we hope to be moving forward.

[RhowdyRam02]

Has not tweaking the schedule and equal payout of TV revenues helped Fordham and Duquesne at all to date? At some point you need to incentivize schools to appropriate more resources into their programs in order to lift all boats. I see what your saying but I don't see how the status queue will help move this league to the next level. I'm curious though, what strategic moves would you have the conference do in order to get on level ground as the big least?

Fordham had their most successful year in quite a while this past year.

What's the fascination with calling it the Big Least? It's always sounded childish, but never more so then now where that conference is home to the defending champion.

I actually think it would be better to come up with some kind of rule where if you have a certain amount of losing conference records in a row that all of the money given to you by the conference must be allocated to basketball uses, such as money for coaches or facilities. I'm sure there's ways for schools to skirt that rule by moving money around, but I think overall it would lead to more investment in the basketball program from bottom feaders as opposed to using the conference money to keep the whole athletic department afloat.

[rjsuperfly66]

You keep saying until a team earns their way up, but what you ignore is your system makes it almost impossible for those teams to do. If their schedules are weak with virtually no chance to make the NCAA's before the season even starts then ticket sales are down, your idea has them getting less TV revenue and you're killing their recruiting. With lower revenue they can't make facility or coaching improvements, and with poor recruiting they'll never be able to compete.

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but your idea doesn't work, on a few different levels and no amount of tweaking will fix some of those issues.

Has not tweaking the schedule and equal payout of TV revenues helped Fordham and Duquesne at all to date? At some point you need to incentivize schools to appropriate more resources into their programs in order to lift all boats. I see what your saying but I don't see how the status queue will help move this league to the next level. I'm curious though, what strategic moves would you have the conference do in order to get on level ground as the big least?

I think the basis of your ideas are good, but they are very challenging to execute.
Again, if you decide to weight towards top teams, you could easily say the top 6 teams will play the other 13 schools once, and each other twice. So Dayton this season would play VCU, St. Bonaventure, George Washington, St. Joe's, and Davidson twice.
And arguably, that's helping the conference because you're going to strengthen their RPI's by facing each other, but in the meantime URI might have it's best team in nearly 2 decades but because they finished 7th last year, they are in the bottom pod, and they'd get 2 or 3 conference games before the A10 tournament against other NCAA caliber opponents, so the committee would turn and say, "They played cupcakes to get those wins," and so if they don't win the A10 tourney they are out, and then fans flip out about how stupid the system is and how it was rigged against them.
There is no easy way to manipulate the schedule to favor certain teams with more challenging schedules. Already top teams seem to be playing 3 "good" opponents and 2 "not so good" opponents, but this isn't the NFL and there aren't many certainties. People know the Patriots will be good this year. But in basketball, all it takes is one suspension, one injury, and you can take a team from NCAA to awful very fast. Preseason last year URI was #2 A10, borderline Top 25, NCAA talk, and then a few bad breaks and they finish 7th in conference with an RPI around 120.
There is no way to fulfill your objective of "Screw the bad opponents who don't invest or get results" and not screw teams who do try hard to invest and do the right things in the process.

[CT Rhody]

You keep saying until a team earns their way up, but what you ignore is your system makes it almost impossible for those teams to do. If their schedules are weak with virtually no chance to make the NCAA's before the season even starts then ticket sales are down, your idea has them getting less TV revenue and you're killing their recruiting. With lower revenue they can't make facility or coaching improvements, and with poor recruiting they'll never be able to compete.

I appreciate your enthusiasm, but your idea doesn't work, on a few different levels and no amount of tweaking will fix some of those issues.

Has not tweaking the schedule and equal payout of TV revenues helped Fordham and Duquesne at all to date? At some point you need to incentivize schools to appropriate more resources into their programs in order to lift all boats. I see what your saying but I don't see how the status queue will help move this league to the next level. I'm curious though, what strategic moves would you have the conference do in order to get on level ground as the big least?

I think the basis of your ideas are good, but they are very challenging to execute.
Again, if you decide to weight towards top teams, you could easily say the top 6 teams will play the other 13 schools once, and each other twice. So Dayton this season would play VCU, St. Bonaventure, George Washington, St. Joe's, and Davidson twice.
And arguably, that's helping the conference because you're going to strengthen their RPI's by facing each other, but in the meantime URI might have it's best team in nearly 2 decades but because they finished 7th last year, they are in the bottom pod, and they'd get 2 or 3 conference games before the A10 tournament against other NCAA caliber opponents, so the committee would turn and say, "They played cupcakes to get those wins," and so if they don't win the A10 tourney they are out, and then fans flip out about how stupid the system is and how it was rigged against them.
There is no easy way to manipulate the schedule to favor certain teams with more challenging schedules. Already top teams seem to be playing 3 "good" opponents and 2 "not so good" opponents, but this isn't the NFL and there aren't many certainties. People know the Patriots will be good this year. But in basketball, all it takes is one suspension, one injury, and you can take a team from NCAA to awful very fast. Preseason last year URI was #2 A10, borderline Top 25, NCAA talk, and then a few bad breaks and they finish 7th in conference with an RPI around 120.
There is no way to fulfill your objective of "Screw the bad opponents who don't invest or get results" and not screw teams who do try hard to invest and do the right things in the process.

RJ - Great points and we're on the same page. Everything would be difficult to execute on which is why the conference hasn't yet. Throwing teams out seems nearly impossible, developing a strategic schedules is hard to do, develop a fair projection for the coming year is extremely hard to do etc. But this is the off season, time to banter different possibilities on how to strengthen the league.

[rjsuperfly66]

Honestly, I don't know why the conference can't impose minimum investment requirements on teams. I don't know how it would be implemented, but like Fordham for example, Rose Hill seats 3,200. It would qualify as a very nice high school gym. LaSalle, they play at a 4K arena, again a glorified high school gym. Based on some things I've read from Fordham, they are just content with where they are: ""I look at some other institutions, even within our league, and I'm not sure their venue is any better," Fordham athletic director David Roach told Bleacher Report. "I like to say 'focus on what you have, not what you don't have, and be positive and move forward,'" he said. "It [Rose Hill Gym] might not be the best venue, but we're in New York City; you can get a great education. "We would shift more games to Barclays before we would spend $80 to $100 million to build an arena here.""Right now the plan is we would go to Barclays or an off-campus venue," Roach said, while adding, "You've got to be selling this place out first." Those comments are from 2014.

I do believe some conferences have self-imposed arena requirements, although I'd have no idea where to track them down. Blame it on a media contract, blame it on something, but put bylaws in place that requirement X from facilities and if not one would have to find alternative arrangements. It's not kicking them out, it's asking them politely to fulfill obligations or go somewhere where being cheap is acceptable. The A10 can and should have higher standards.

Also, I think it ties in some with the whole practice facility debate. There are a lot of people who say "It's a practice facility, it's not that big of deal," and on the surface they may be partially correct, but to players they love the idea of having a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to them and their basketball development. If you don't continuously keep pumping money in, whether your arena, facility, or now special housing, you're just going to keep falling further and further behind, and even with a good season last year by Fordham standards, that's probably where they'll continue to head.

[PlayMikeMotenMore]

Win and lose the right games, you won't be talking about the schedule. A team has about 30 chances to make their case for inclusion into the NCAA tournament.

[CT Rhody]

Honestly, I don't know why the conference can't impose minimum investment requirements on teams. I don't know how it would be implemented, but like Fordham for example, Rose Hill seats 3,200. It would qualify as a very nice high school gym. LaSalle, they play at a 4K arena, again a glorified high school gym. Based on some things I've read from Fordham, they are just content with where they are: ""I look at some other institutions, even within our league, and I'm not sure their venue is any better," Fordham athletic director David Roach told Bleacher Report. "I like to say 'focus on what you have, not what you don't have, and be positive and move forward,'" he said. "It [Rose Hill Gym] might not be the best venue, but we're in New York City; you can get a great education. "We would shift more games to Barclays before we would spend $80 to $100 million to build an arena here.""Right now the plan is we would go to Barclays or an off-campus venue," Roach said, while adding, "You've got to be selling this place out first." Those comments are from 2014.

I do believe some conferences have self-imposed arena requirements, although I'd have no idea where to track them down. Blame it on a media contract, blame it on something, but put bylaws in place that requirement X from facilities and if not one would have to find alternative arrangements. It's not kicking them out, it's asking them politely to fulfill obligations or go somewhere where being cheap is acceptable. The A10 can and should have higher standards.

Also, I think it ties in some with the whole practice facility debate. There are a lot of people who say "It's a practice facility, it's not that big of deal," and on the surface they may be partially correct, but to players they love the idea of having a state-of-the-art facility dedicated to them and their basketball development. If you don't continuously keep pumping money in, whether your arena, facility, or now special housing, you're just going to keep falling further and further behind, and even with a good season last year by Fordham standards, that's probably where they'll continue to head.

Those are interesting comments by Fordham. The bottom of the league (Which URI has been part of in all fairness) has been dragging down this league for years. They need to put the resources in to compete or both parties need to go their opposite ways. The college landscape is just too competitive to do anything different and still compete as a league at the High Major level.

[NYGFan_Section208]

Seems like, less than half of the D1 teams are in 'real' competition...but, having them all is still better than slimming it down. Then again, that may be a totally misinformed opinion..