cgeldmacher
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Posts posted by cgeldmacher
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10 hours ago, thetorch said:
Show me evidence that dropping down will cause us not to go up again? Examples?!?! until then its just an opinion, and a wrong one.
A10 tv has very few advantages over the MVC. Pay is roughly the same. What has all this "national" exposure done for SLU?
Major Markets is myth #3. If we play a basketball game in a city with 9 million people but attended by 1500 people is that really a major market game? St. Louis is THE major market in the A10. Besides Dayton SLU has the highest attendance, best tv ratings, and most media coverage of any team in our league, year in year out.
What is the difference between playing Fordham or Bradley? Fordham has better restaurants, and its fun to take the team to a broadway show. Other than that Bradley has a better facility and more fans at the game than Fordham will ever have. They usually play better basketball too. I guess you can't put a price on it being a slow news day in New York and the chance the Billikens could get a blurb on page 56 of the Post the next morning.
What good does it do SLU to play teams that while in major markets, have the stature of Fontbonne in those markets (and worse facilities)? None. Quit bringing it up. Fordham, Duquesne, St. Joes, LaSalle, GW etc having any type of presence in their respective huge markets is as mythical as the unicorn.
There are no examples, because no one is stupid enough to make that move. You ask us to show evidence that dropping down will not allow you to go up again. I ask you to give one example of a program that dropped down. Give as many as you can, and then we will evaluate what kind of success came out of that strategy.
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11 hours ago, thetorch said:
Jimerson has been a great role player. He's racked up points, but he's been a top 3 or 4 player on the team his career, not 1 or 2. This is his chance to be a difference maker, but we'll also see that a team led by Jimerson isn't a .500 squad.
Isabel was a good one year investment. Without him Ford would already been fired. That said Isabel came dangerously close to getting kicked off the team that year on more than one occasion and wrecked the chemistry on Ford's best team at SLU. While he won us the A10 tourney, his antics put us in a position where we had to win it to make the NCAAs. Talentwise that team was an at large team, a top 7 seed. Isabel's fights, hazing, skipping practices, leaving the team on road trips, and robbing teammates led to a 6th place finish in conference instead of a 1st place.
That has been Ford's MO, take on risky recruits and hope #teamblue rehabilitates them. It hasn't worked at all, but he gets the credit of bringing in highly rated recruits. They just never end up playing here.
Jimerson is not a role player. He has led the Billikens in scoring the past two seasons (16.3 per game and 14.0 per game). That is not a role player.
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1 hour ago, brianstl said:
The high school recruiting had been subpar since the 2019 class. Not one starter on last season from a high school recruit since that class.
It was the reason that being an at large bid quality tournament team last season was so needed. They needed it to jump start their recruiting. Selling the future and program building has a shelf life. You have to produce results at some point.
Sadly, I think this is looking at the recruiting process through the lens of the former way things were done. If we had made it to the Sweet 16 last year, kids who we want on our team this year are still going to ask "How much NIL money to I get?"
Let's suppose there is a kid that we are recruiting who was also being recruited by Ole Miss. Let's suppose we made it to the Sweet 16 last year, and that Ole Miss went 12-21 last year (their actual record). We offer the kid $20,000 in NIL money and Ole Miss offers him $60,000. Do you really think that kid is going to go to SLU because we had a good year last year over getting 3 times as much money in his pocket? There in lies the problem.
As unfortunate as it is, even having good seasons now may not beat NIL money, which, if I had to make a prediction, we will always be short of compared to large state schools.
billiken_roy, 3star_recruit, Young Charles and 3 others like this -
35 minutes ago, RUBillsFan said:
Welp...we're all a bit down on the program, but if Brian Conklin is hyped about the season starting then I'm hyped too. LETS F*CKING GO!!!
Before any season, I'm excited about the Billikens until they give me reason not to be. When they give me reason to no longer be excited that this is going to be a great year, I still go to the games and support my team. Let's Go Bills.
Billiken Rich, Billikenbooster, CenHudDude and 4 others like this -
On 9/15/2023 at 3:10 PM, TheA_Bomb said:
Thanks for the response. In my previous message I agree that a student athlete should be a full time student in good standing. So I think you misunderstand my position. In good standing means that you are eligible academically at the school you attend based on whatever educational certification board they utilize.
As to your other point regarding receiving something therefore something is expected. Yes many athletes receive special benefits because of their talent. So they are expected to perform the sporting event if able. It is a meritocracy for the public to view. If you don't practice and perform you lose your place on the team you can lose your scholarship. I agree with this position. Much like your reference to a job there are expectations
I also understand that no one is forced to be an athlete. However why does choosing to be an athlete in college subject someone to undue external control? That I don't agree with. We the sports consumers are the reason why this is so out of control relative to what it used to be or what you think it should be.
It is none of anyone's business why someone may decide to transfer schools and why should that decision preclude them from participating in sports that the school and fans of that school want to see? It's arbitrary and unduly limiting that other students do not experience. Therefore, it's wrong within our American standards of individual freedom.
If you're a student in good standing, enrolled in the school, the school wants you to play. You should be able to play.
I suspect those opposed do not like the turmoil, the speed of change lately and think that it impacts their chosen school negatively. Furthermore, I suspect that many value loyalty. I understand that we want to believe that player is loyal to a school we love. Some are and those that transfer aren't. To force them to stay my arbitrary rules is selfish and controlling. I value a person being able to determine how they want to live their life aka Freedom over my selfish enjoyment of a sports team that may lose a good player.
A-Bomb, I'm going to give you credit here. I am appreciating this debate, because you are taking the right path with your argument. If this were a true debate, and I was assigned your side of the argument instead of mine, I would be making arguments very similar to the ones that you are making.
That all being said, I think it just boils down to the simple fact that someone, anyone, who accepts the benefits that college athletes accept when they get a scholarship can be made to accept those benefits under a set of rules. If you know that you are accepting benefits to be a college athlete who is playing under the rules laid out by the NCAA, then you are agreeing to abide by those rules, even if you disagree with them. So, on the legal side, if the question is whether or not the NCAA can make and enforce those rules, the answer is that they can.
An entirely different question is whether or not free transfer should be the rule. I think transfers should be restricted. You think they should not. That is opinion. That is a different question than whether the NCAA can make the rule.
My argument for why transfers should be restricted ties into what Wendelprof is saying. College football and college basketball benefits universities financially. The NCAA and its member universities are not for profit entities funneling their money to shareholders/owners. They are non-profit entities earning money to benefit education. I know that there is this sentiment that the NCAA is the huge, evil, greedy organization. However, the truth is that the money the NCAA earns pays its bills and the rest is distributed to member institutions (https://www.ncaa.org/sports/2021/5/4/finances.aspx). The money made by the revenue sports not only benefits the students who play those sports, but it also helps fund the non-revenue sports, and helps the universities fund educational ventures.
Kids staying around at universities they agree to play for and accept benefits from helps keep interest in college sports up. Allowing kids to transfer freely hurts people's interest in college sports. At least that is my opinion, but I think that opinion is shared by many. If free transfer is causing interest in college sports to drop, hurting viewership, hurting butts in seats, then I think it should not be allowed. I'm not asking for a drastic change, just a return to the rule that has always been there so that we aren't taking money away from the institutions. You know that if profits fall off, they fall off will be taken away from the education side and the non-profits sports, not from the football and basketball budgets.
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13 hours ago, TheA_Bomb said:
Conference teams are competing against each other for standing within the Conference and a mid-season change within the conference could severely effect the outcome of that specific season. Therefore, I understand controls to stop immediate eligibility for mid-season transfer. It is a reasonable limitation on a student athlete to protect the integrity of the game.
However, I think that limitations on transfers and immediate eligibility out of season are unreasonable. It is none of our business why a student wants to transfer. So now some panel of strangers picked by a faceless organization in Indianapolis gets to review the merits of someone's psychological reasons to transfer? A young man or woman in order to play a sport is forced to display their most private life issues for debate by panel of strangers and internet fodder?! That could have a detrimental impact on their mental health, and or future chosen career. It is a definite violation of privacy.
To take part in school activities of which athletics are, you should be a full time student in good standing. Outside of that there should be very minimal rules.
Those advocating limited transfers and loss of playing time are advocating protectionism because they want to keep a student athlete at their school. I advocate freedom and a right to privacy. I will usually side with the individual vs a conglomerate of beareaucrats making money off the efforts of said individuals.
I asked a legitimate question only 3Star gave an answer. Make the argument why should a student be limited on transfers and immediate eligibility? I've explained what I feel is a reasonable limitation and what isn't and my reasons for my position.
Let me take a shot. Because colleges are supposed to be about educating people and not about billion dollar sports leagues. Collegiate basketball players who switch schools multiple times are not doing so because they have an issue with the quality of the education they are receiving for free. They are doing so, because of purely basketball related reasons.
When players sign with a school as freshmen, they are getting a lot out of signing that piece of paper. They get free tuition often valued at $30,000 to $80,000 a year. They get free housing. They get all of their food for free. They get access to multimillion dollar facilities to play a game that has nothing to do with the education they are receiving. They get free transportation to and from games. They get hotel rooms for road games. They get free tutoring for their classes that most students don't have access to. They get fame and notoriety that allows them to, now, profit from given the new NIL rules.
For all of this, it is not unreasonable to ask those players to live by a certain set of rules. Show up to practice. Go to class. You say you "advocate freedom." How about the freedom to get all this stuff and not have to show up for practice. Why doesn't your philosophy include that? How about not show up for classes? Why doesn't your advocating of freedom include proposing that they be free from having to go to class or maybe not have to show up at the games.
When someone receives something, like a salary for instance, there are requirements that come with it. You have to show up for work. You have to do a good job. You do not have the "freedom" to punch your boss in the nose. There are rules you have to live by.
The idea that college athletes who choose to go down a road that they don't have to, no one is forcing them, should not have any restrictions on how they collect the benefits they receive is asinine. There is absolutely nothing wrong with placing restrictions on what an athlete is allowed and not allowed to do when he agrees to attend a university and play for that university's team and receive all of the benefits that come with it.
kshoe, ACE, billikenbill and 4 others like this -
11 minutes ago, JMM28 said:
I like the idea in an "out of the box" way. I don't think this part would necessarily be true. You still need conference officials on the ground at some level as well as enough folks to handle a lot of schools and their needs.
I would also kick some of the no-loads out and add in some of the midwestern private schools Belmont, Drake, Bradley, etc. to create a better nationwide swath.
Also, for those that have always wanted to dump the dead weight of the A-10, this would be an opportunity to do that. As we know, it is nearly impossible to drop a team from an athletic conference. However, if the upper portion of the A-10 accepted offers to joint the WCC, they could leave the dead weight behind.
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9 minutes ago, JMM28 said:
I like the idea in an "out of the box" way. I don't think this part would necessarily be true. You still need conference officials on the ground at some level as well as enough folks to handle a lot of schools and their needs.
I would also kick some of the no-loads out and add in some of the midwestern private schools Belmont, Drake, Bradley, etc. to create a better nationwide swath.
I wasn't suggesting not having a conference office or commissioner. I was just saying that the two conference offices (A-10 and WCC) would not be so excited about working on this idea if it meant one of the two offices gets laid off. The schools would have to do the deal on their own.
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4 hours ago, brianstl said:
The MVC shares tournament revenue equally. In the A10 the tourney team keeps 75% and the conference only gets 25% and that 25% is spread among more programs. So payouts in MVC will be higher for that reason alone.
Unless we are the team making the tournament, which is the goal. Then we would be giving away money by switching.
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17 hours ago, thetorch said:
"Institutional Fit" or "Like Minded" is the biggest myth that has been peddled to and by SLU fans in regard to the A10.
This is basketball. No one cares if a school is Jesuit or not, or has certain majors, or higher acceptance rates like SLU's.
None of that matters at all. When it is brought up as a positive for the A10 I will shut it down every time.
We have a 10,500-seat arena, a 2.5 mil per year coach, opening the 20 mil champions center, the largest asst budgets, charter flights, and the list goes on.
What programs are doing this in the A10 beside us? Dayton, maybe VCU. What programs are even close to us in this respect? Anyone? Bueller? The Champions Center, basically a huge athlete lounge costs more than 3/4 of the conference's arenas.
Look how much the conference applauded Fordham for finishing in the top half of the league last year. They play in a 100 year old arena with 1500 seats in the basketball capital of the world and they can't sell out. 1500 seats in NYC?!?!?! Fordham is excited about this? There are HS teams in the MCC with better facilities and bigger budgets than Fordham.
Did you see the pictures of Davidson's locker rooms? Simply atrocious. I could build a better locker room on a weekend with a $1000 budget and a crew I found standing outside the home depot. A college with less than 2,000 undergrads playing in a 40 year old arena that is half full most games is not a like minded institution.
The list goes on LaSalle, St Joes, Mason, St Bona, Loyola, Duquesne, GW, these are all schools just happy to be in the A10. They have neither the want or need to be any better than they are, low rent borderline mid major programs. What do we share in common with them?
Then we have the public dregs, UMass and Rhode Island, flush with cash but certainly don't spend it on hoops. UMass has a terrible football program to support, RI is happy to be second fiddle to Providence. Nothing in common with SLU. Terrible programs, terrible facilities that SLU dwarfs in every imaginable concern.
Even in our worst attendance year, we averaged a hair under 7k last year. SLU still DOUBLED the attendance of NINE teams in the A10. We TRIPLED the attendance of 4 teams. How is that an indication of "Like Minded" schools.
Every fan on this board has at one point questioned the commitment of SLU's administration to athletics. Imagine being a LaSalle fan, a Fordham fan, a GW fan, and on and on? These programs aren't just worse than ours they are exponentially worse than ours.
SLU places a high value on athletics, maybe not high enough but we are head and shoulders above everyone in this conference save for Dayton and VCU. I may not know what conference SLU should be in, but I know it isn't the A10. We've been in this dump second class conference for going on 19 years and it has gotten us nowhere. The days of making excuses, "this is the best place for us" "Institutional fit" "We make $20 more dollars from ESPN+" trying to convince ourselves that we are in good shape should be over.
Even if everything you said is true, that does't mean the the correct reaction to all that is to move to a lesser conference.
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22 hours ago, Bay Area Billiken said:
A comparison of the number of NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament bids since SLU joined the Atlantic 10 for the '06-'07 season:
A10 51, average of 3.0 NCAA bids per season; MVC 26, average of 1.5 NCAA bids per season; Horizon 19, average of 1.056 NCAA bids per season.
If the comparison is begun at the '13-'14 season, the season after Temple, Xavier and Butler (one and done) left the A10 and Creighton left the MVC, the number of NCAA Tourney bids is as follows: A10 25, an average of 2.8 per season; MVC 12 bids, an average of 1.3 per season; Horizon, 9 bids, an average of 1 bid per season.
All of the above and the following does not include the '20 season when the NCAA Tourney was not played. The MVC has been Juan Bid 6 of the last 7 seasons, the Horizon Juan Bid for the last 13 consecutive seasons. The A10 was Juan Bid in '23 for the first time since '05, before SLU joined the A10. Let's hope '23 was an outlier for the A10, and not the start of a trend. Juan Bid could be an unwelcome guest due to the NCAA Power 5 +1 skewed NET and the Power 5 +1 not playing non-Power 5's on the road.
In terms of television rights, the A10 has deals with CBS for its A10 Tourney Championship Game on Selection Sunday, CBS Sports Network, NBC- now on USA Network after the NBC Sports Network folded, and the ESPN Networks for the A10 Friday Night games, which put the A10 in a national spotlight, in an only game in town scenario. This is not a close call- A10 TV access is significantly better than the MVC and eons better than the Horizon. A lot of MVC games are confined to ESPN+ streaming. Whether the A10 can maintain this excellent linear TV exposure remains to be seen.
The institutional fit is no contest. I realize the detractors don't like to be told that, but that one is also not close.
The only thing the MVC and to a lesser extent Horizon have over the A10 for SLU is geography.
As noted by another poster, if the MVC is so great, why did Loyola Chicago leave the MVC for the A10? That is a rhetorical question and yields an obvious answer.
My fellow Billikens, this one is not a close call. While the ultimate home for SLU should be in the Big East, the A10 is significantly better than the MVC and Horizon.
Great breakdown. Sad that your argument had to be made. Thanks for putting in the time.
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If we lose VCU and UMass, I think one possible move is to try to merge the A-10 and the West Coast Conference into a mega private school conference. I would think this conference would have good bargaining power for TV rights considering its cities would include, New York, D.C. (2 teams), Philadelphia (2 teams), Pittsburgh, St. Louis, Chicago, Bay Area (2 teams), San Diego, Los Angeles (2 teams), and Portland. Non-revenue sports could be kept on one side of the country or the other outside of championship games. Just create Eastern Division and a Western Division.
This would have to be done amongst the schools and Athletic Departments as one of the conference offices would go away. Can't imagine they would be invested in a situation where they have a 50/50 shot of being let go.
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17 minutes ago, Cowboy II said:
-isn't the MVC final also on CBS? it's just the weekend before SS
Maybe, but its at a time when its not on anyone radar. At least the A-10 still gets this prime spot on Selection Sunday (for now).
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On 9/9/2023 at 6:04 PM, thetorch said:
What gets us in the Big East?
Winning 4 straight Valley or Horizon titles?
Finishing on average 4th in the A10 over the same timespan?
I'm taking the titles every time. The BE is too. Nothing else changes. They can't take our facilities, budget or market away from us.
The A10 has done nothing for us, equally we've done nothing for them. Time to cut our losses. We have a limited time frame. We need to be in a major conference NOW if we want to stay relevant. Staying in this A10 purgatory will lead us down the road to playing in the same conference as UMSL.
Yes, they can take your budget away from you. What is the amount Mo Valley teams get paid for their TV package? What is the amount that the A-10 get paid for its TV package (this is the one that always has the A-10 tournament championship game on national television on Selection Sunday). Moving to the Mo Valley would cause a major hit to the Athletic Department budget.
Your assumption is that we would put the same product on the court in the Mo Valley or the Horizon. We would not. We would have less money to spend on the program and lesser recruits playing in the games. The answer is not to drop down a level and hope that winning at a lower level impresses the Big East. The answer is to win at our current level. How about winning the A-10 four consecutive years. That should be our goal.
Also, why do you think Loyola Chicago left the Mo Valley for the A-10? As 05 likes to say "I'll hang up and listen."
Billikenbooster, RiseOfTheBillikens, Compton and 1 other like this -
On 9/8/2023 at 9:19 PM, thetorch said:
I may have given up on the A10.
Why can't the Big East be reached from the MVC vs A10. Do you have reasons? Creighton did it.
Do you think if Butler hadn't played in the A10 for a couple seasons that the BE wouldn't have tapped them from the Horizon? If so why?
We joined the A10 because it was the best conference we could be in and it recieved multiple bids giving us a better chance of getting in the NCAA tournament. It has now failed on one of those fronts. No better time to reevaluate.
Best reason I can give is that recruits still look at a schedule that includes Dayton, St. Joe's, UMass, Davidison, etc. as more appealing than playing Illinois State, SIU-Carbondale, Mo State, Indiana State, etc. Dropping to the Mo Valley or Horizon would make it even more impossible to recruit talent.
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18 hours ago, thetorch said:
Went to the Joe Buck/Skip Carrey speaker series event at the MAC last week. 10 people to a table. 3 husband/wife couples, 2 father/sons including myself. Net worth at my table was 60 mil or so. My father contributed 1 mil to that total and I contributed about $20. Everyone at the table is a Billikens season ticket holder. It's a fallacy that SLU doesn't have any or few big donors. There are many, but they support the school at large more than the athletic program. Getting into a major all sport conference is bigger than an arena or new locker rooms. It raises the profile of the whole school. It should be sold like that to donors who fund our education programs or building projects on campus.
Ten people worth 60 milllion are not in the league as the donors that make a real difference to a school's athletic department. If the people at that table each donate a $1 million to SLU they've just given away 10% of their wealth. Don't get me wrong, that table had some money, and I'm sure they give generously to SLU, but the high dollar donors at bigger schools are often on a different level.
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23 hours ago, Taj79 said:
This has got gimmick written all over. "Come out and help set a Guiness World Record." I understand women's volleyball is B-I-G in Nebraska and Nebraska has a top five team but the old record for attendance was like 18k to 19k. Still .... it's a record.
That's only because they were limited to their facility size. My understanding is that they scheduled this game in the football stadium to give Nebraska fans that wouuld never have a chance to see one of the games (they're always sold out) the opportunity to see one. Once the tickets sales get over a certain amount, they realized they had a chance for a record and went for it. However, I don't think that was the goal at first.
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1 minute ago, billikenfan05 said:
They don't necessarily need the help, but it will certainly do so. They are a true volleyball blue blood. My customer is based in Lincoln, and the representative I work with is a huge husker fan. This game was one of the few times average Nebraska fans get to see the volleyball team in person at home.
I love when a community develops an affinity to a women's sport that doesn't exist in most other places. Tennessee was like this back in the Pat Summitt days. Following women's college basketball is much more popular now, but it wasn't nearly that way back when Tennessee fans were supporting Summitt's teams.
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1 hour ago, almaman said:
Very impressive. That picture will be shown by their coach to every recruit he or she wants.
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3 hours ago, billikenfan05 said:
I don't necessarily know the inner business workings of the sports streaming industry. I do however think I have a decent idea of what is best for fans. I just can't see + going away any time soon. P5 networks can do what they do because they have LARGE rabid fanbases. Football is a year round follow and basketball to a lesser extent. A10 doesn't have the size or revenue stream the P5s do with football to produce original content outside of live streams. If or when + ends, I would advocate the A10 strike a partnership with Youtube. What you might see is small conferences offering a streaming service like Mountain West Conference does. Other than Youtube, you're not going to get the accessibility you're getting with ESPN+. A10 certainly would be mistaken in putting themselves behind a paywall that doesn't come with extra benefits. ie: FloSports. I believe going behind a paywall like Fubo would be similar. I pay for DirecTV Stream. I don't want to switch from that to Fubo and I certainly don't want to add another subscription. Everyone and their gam gam knows how to use Youtube.
My theory about what will happen is that ESPN+ will either be sold or spun off. To me, however, that service, or something like it, is the future of how we will watch sports. Network television is on the clock for disappearing. Cable and its bundles are, whether it is good or bad, on the way out. These developments are resulting in a crisis in sports television that is like watching a train wreck happen in slow motion. The effects that we are already seeing are the Bally's debacle and college sports conference reallignment.
To me, the end result, after several more years, will be that all sports are on streaming and available through packages. You can buy every MLB game for the year for one price, or just all of your team's games (home and road) for a lesser price, or just one game for a price that is even less (but a much higher per game cost than the rest). You will also be able to buy an "all NCAA" package" or a conference package, or a package just to see your college, or just your college's men's basketball games, or just one particular game. The prices will obviously be scaled. The good news will be that to make this work, nearly every game will have to be available in some form. It will also be nice to have the options and be able to decide what you want to pay for. The question will be what it will cost. I hope that interest in sports remains high and this situation results in more options for rabid fans. The other side of the coin is that it could kill interest in sports by nickel and diming a fan's desire to watch a game.
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On 8/26/2023 at 1:51 PM, Lord Elrond said:
Looking at the box score, they just mopped the floor with MVSU (25-11, 25-9, 25-13). Unfortunately no way to watch it since Alabama was only broadcasting its games.
For those who want a glimpse of where the on-line streaming world is leading college non-revenue sports, read on. I saw the SLU game on the SLU website had no link to watch next weekend’s volleyball games. However, I clicked on the host school, Central Michigan’s official athletics site, and they WERE apparently offering a way to see all three games. The link led me to a website called alltopcontent.com, which said I could create an account to watch the games in three easy steps. There is no app for this, just watching over your web browser from what I could determine. The fine print at the bottom of the website said:
Offer and Billing Terms: Try our service for €1.98 for five (5) days. If you don’t like it or you find that the service is not for you, You may cancel at any time in your five (5) days trial. To cancel, access your Account and click on Cancel Membership. At the end of the five (5) day trial period, we will automatically continue your membership on a monthly basis and the service will automatically charge the credit card you have provided the applicable monthly €59.99 fee, for as long as you continue the service. You may cancel the service at any time, cancelling the recurring fee moving forward. This page is designed and operated by MARTWAY LIMITED Kosta Xenofontos 5, Lakatamia, 2335, Nicosia, Cyprus
I think I’ll give a pass on this because I don’t know how hard it would be to cancel it. While I would think that any EU country, which Cyprus is, would be relatively safe because of EU laws governing it, Nicosia Cyprus is divided between the south part governed by Cyprus where EU applies, and the north part where EU laws don’t apply (feel free to look up the history of Cyprus, specifically what happened in 1974 on line for details on why if you like) and I have no idea how easy it would be to cancel this after watching and no inclination to try.
For a glimpse of where the on streaming content world is leading non-revenue college sports, it’s very illuminating. If you were a Central Michigan fan or had a family member who played there and wanted to watch the games, you would have a way to do it, but it would cost you 60 Euros a month, or 240 Euros total for the 4 month volleyball season. Not sure what the quality of the broadcasts would be, or to be fair what other content you would get, but there it is. Also, I’m sure that’s only Central Michigan home games, (maybe conference games? There’s a limit to my curiosity on how much time I am going to spend researching this). For away and non-conference games, I guess you might have to deal with and pay for more services like this.
Thankfully, with SLU being in the A10, and games being on ESPN+, one can watch fairly easily and relatively cheaply. There might be an occasional game where you have to deal with someone else if you were visiting a school and that school wasn’t in a deal with ESPN+, like the Big East. For them, if you wanted to watch non-revenue sports for a Big East school, it’s FloSports at $29.99 a month last I checked (no cheap 5-day trial either). Never thought I’d see a deal where FloSports seemed cheap, but there you go.
Next question, how secure is the A10’s contract with ESPN? How long will it stay in place? If it goes away, (and ESPN and it’s owner Disney are trying to cut costs and increase revenue for streaming services right now), just how expensive will it get to watch non-revenue, or even revenue sports for SLU fans? I don’t think many SLU fans would go for 30 bucks a month, let alone 60 Euros a month. Food for thought.
FYI, 1 Euro equals $1.08 US at current rates. So 59.99 Euros equals $64.76 US
I have a feeling that in order to keep services like ESPN+ going, Disney will have to create special price tiers to cover the costs (and probably have to have a little bit of a profit) of showing these sorts of games. Down the road, I would pay $60 a year just for the ability to watch SLU's non-revenue sports on a streaming service.
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2 hours ago, brianstl said:
I think offensively we will be good. It all comes down to how the team plays defense. 3 point defense is a concern, but I am particularly worried about how effective we will be at preventing wings from finishing in the lane and if we will be able to stop any bigs from scoring at will against us. We were bad defensively last season and that was with Okoro often able to cover up the mistakes of the other guys on the floor.
We may be playing a lot zone defense this year
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On 8/19/2023 at 7:21 AM, billiken_roy said:
it's my opinion the majority of D1 college athletes in the revenue sports never cared about an education. it was always about playing in the nfl or nba no matter how remote their possibility was.
Or, for some, its about continuing to play a game you enjoy rather than having to get a real job while being pampered with free food and lodging while only having to be mildly pay attention to your sham classes
billiken_roy likes this -
Every announcement the AD Dept. made and every discussion started would be followed by days and weeks of posts by this board dissecting and criticizing the decision no matter how logical. No organization puts that information out there in such a fashion for this exact reason. Go to any town hall meeting by any local government on any topic if you need an example.
My point - we don't need to know about every decision made.
HoosierPal likes this
New Post Season Tourney Discussed
in Billikens.com Main Board
Posted
I disagree. The NCAA tournament would get so-so ratings with a field of only big state schools. It is the Cinderella stories that bring in the casual viewers. Eliminate the surprise upsets and the shocking Sweet 16 teams, and you lose the casual viewers. I guarantee, if that happens, all of the sudden we will hear about below average ratings, and CBS and the NCAA will not be able to comprehend why.