Local Conference Realignment For Sports Not Named Football/Basketball?

[rjsuperfly66]

One issue being heavily discussed, especially on the Eastern seaboard, is scheduling alliances to save travel costs for non-revenue sports. Using Old Dominion as an example, it makes little sense for its baseball team to travel in Conference USA league games to play at Rice (in Houston), FIU (in South Florida) and Louisiana Tech (in Ruston). Why not James Madison, Richmond and Georgetown? They are all in different leagues, but it would make much more sense.

The same could be said for schools in the Northeast, as it makes more sense for Boston College, Rhode Island, Holy Cross and UConn to play each other in non-revenue sports than many of their far-flung geographic league peers. “You would have to get to a place where people put a lot of ego aside,” said another AD in the Group of Five. “Sports is driven more by ego than common sense.”

One athletic director in a non-football league said of scheduling more geographically friendly games instead of league schedules: “We are having those discussions.” He said limiting costs on conference road trips in non-revenue sports would save his athletic department hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. In leagues outside the Power Five, that money matters.

“Can you imagine being Conference USA or the AAC and you’re sending your baseball team to UTEP or Tulsa,” the AD said, using hypothetical geographic outliers. “It doesn’t make any sense. Much like everything, we’ve done this to ourselves. For us to not think about regional scheduling alliances is complete lunacy.”

Athletic directors are doing everything possible to save sports, which means non-revenue sports could look much different whenever the sports calendar returns to normal.

https://sports.yahoo.com/with-budgets-t ... 23901.html

[Ramulous]

I would be in favor of this provided the schools in conferences like the Big East, ACC, AAC, and CUSA made commitments to schedule home and home basketball games with A10 teams....

[rjsuperfly66]

I would be in favor of this provided the schools in conferences like the Big East, ACC, AAC, and CUSA made commitments to schedule home and home basketball games with A10 teams....

The point of the article (much of which I cut out to show that specific part) was that the fear is that fiscal tightening from the coronavirus fallout will impact Olympic Sports. This week, Cincinnati announced it was cutting it's soccer program, and earlier this month Old Dominion announced it was cutting it's wrestling program. Specifically, the G5 commissioners have reached out to the NCAA asking for relief from several regulatory requirements for up to 4 years, such as scholarship requirements, attendance requirements, minimum numbers of games thresholds, etc. They offered this because they believe without it, more sports will be cut.

Long-winded way of saying that I don't think anyone is in a position to be making threats of "We'll only agree to this if you play us in basketball or football." It has a mutual benefit to everyone if it were to happen.

[rambone 78]

The AAC is the best example of the ridiculous distance between member schools within a conference.

Some 2000 miles end to end...…

Would be nice if URI could play most of their games within the Northeast.....could rekindle some of those natural rivalries of the past.

And I don't just mean only the non revenue sports either.

Bring back some form of the Yankee Conference! lol.....a pipe dream I know.

Could that mean a new conference like that would be a one bid league?

Probably...but that's where I think things are headed anyway for a school in URI's cash strapped situation.

We can't even compete BB budget wise with the top schools in our own conference.

And I don't think that's going to change, ever.

Dan when he was here, was trying to get URI to increase the BB budget, to be on par with the top ones.

He knew that was needed to consistently stay at the top of the A10.

I also think Thorr knows this too, but not much he can do about it.

[steviep123]

I have long thought it would be better for all if there could be football conferences, basketball conferences, then the non revenue sports being together. If football was on their own, all this conference realignment (which was always done for football) wouldn't have messed up hoops.

A lot of this makes sense.

[rjsuperfly66]

I think the challenge is that basketball is more like football than it is like the others.

Networks pay a lot of money to stream football. Networks pay some money to stream basketball. Networks pay no/limited money for other sports.

Ultimately, basketball programs are still within their right to position their conference in a way they can get better media deals, which is why pairing up with football schools made sense in a lot of realignment scenarios.

And even if we said basketball was a separate entity, you'd still see very similar situations of elite basketball programs pairing off (with geographical considerations) to maximize basketball media deals. And you'd still see networks trying to pair certain programs together because they had certain football interests.

[Ramulous]

You call it threatening...I call it bargaining....

[Brian Forster]

2 years ago,UCONN's # one home game for FB attendance was Rhody?
It would really help if could go back to traditional rivalries.

[rjsuperfly66]

You call it threatening...I call it bargaining....

But to bargain you need leverage. This is a situation where if pursued, is done so because everyone knows they need to work together. There can be no bully trying to leverage games in other sports because ultimately if it comes down to form a new conference or cancel baseball/softball, they create a new conference. And even if someone decided to play nice and say "Yes, this is great, we'll play all of you in a home and home in basketball to say thank you," it could be 10-20 years before they cycle through to you due to the other teams in the league. It just doesn't make a ton of logistical sense. And that also assumes that desirable conferences are included in this. For the most part, it sounds like it's the G5 and FCS schools talking about this and hoping the P5+BE hops on. Do you really care to threaten Central Connecticut or Holy Cross into home and homes?

[Ramulous]

RJ you mentioned Boston College and UConn in the initial post. I used that in my thoughts. Add in St Johns and Seton Hall as examples of affordable travel Add UMass and Providence. Maybe BU and Northeastern. Develop good relationships and begin to schedule each other occasionally in hoops.

[raminwarwick]

The regional Non Football and Basketball conferences makes to much sense for the North East teams. I just wonder why PC wasn't included in the original post while BC (ACC) and UConn (BE) were. Also, why not UMASS. If you add in Ramulous mentioned teams you would have a great league for the minor sports. Also you could, as he mentioned, add 1 or 2 games a year in BB from the teams that are not already on schedules. PC not playing URI,UCONN,SH and ST JOHN. Rhody not playing PC, UMASS.
Rhody getting 2 games every year out of the BE teams ,BC,HC,BU,Northeastern would be great for our schedule. One or two out of BB conference games could be worked out with the new minor sport schedule.

[RF1]

The UConn president this week offered his opinion that he thought nearly all 2020 fall sports would likely eventually be cancelled.