Sick of the Mo Valley backers

[cujaysfan]

i don't recall saying it was a quality win - i listed a bunch of non-conference games - and said that CU killed IUPUI and that they were a tourney team.

as i said before - CU fans want to move up and Creighton's administration is working, looking and waiting for the right conference situation to come up. while i wish that we could schedule better - i think that Creighton's stability and conference situation has been preferable to the vagabond ways of the bills. this move to the a10 is not the last for SLU - i expect another within a few more years.

while the a10 is a fine basketball conference - the mvc outdrew it last year...the bills do not fit in geographically and this doesn't bode well for the conference's future. if history tells us anything these conferences with large geographical spreads fail (Old WAC, CUSA, etc). again - staying in CUSA would not be the smart move and the a10 is really the only option for SLU.

what should have happened is that when the great midwest broke up - the basketball only schools should have gotten together with creighton, bradley, butler etc - and formed the midwestern private league...

[billiken_roy]

bluejay said, "while the a10 is a fine basketball conference - the mvc outdrew it last year..."

maybe so, but let's look at bottom line revenue. the printout i have in front of me says that the a-10 earned $4.7 million from the ncaa alone. now we know for a fact they have a more lucrative espn deal than the mvc has, so not sure where you are going with the attendance thing other than to make sure we know that there isnt much to do in cedar rapids maybe.

bluejay said, "the bills do not fit in geographically and this doesn't bode well for the conference's future. if history tells us anything these conferences with large geographical spreads fail (Old WAC, CUSA, etc)."

i think if this was 1940 and plane rides were not sensible for a college team, you might have a point. still it isnt as bad as you make out as there are other midwest teams and like has been mentioned time and time again by various posters, a bus ride to evansville might take longer than a plane ride to philly.

bluejay said, "again - staying in CUSA would not be the smart move and the a10 is really the only option for SLU."

glad to see you finally say that.

blue jay said, "what should have happened is that when the great midwest broke up - the basketball only schools should have gotten together with creighton, bradley, butler etc - and formed the midwestern private league..."

or the papal league we have all pined for should have happened. no denying that. notre dame might still make that come true if they agree to head to the acc.

bottom line bluejay, you know as well as us that the mvc isnt right. and to be honest you should be p!ssed that your beloved jays are stuck in it.

[cujaysfan]

i think we have been essentially agreeing all along - i have never said that slu should go to mvc - and if you will scroll up i have said so before.

bluejay said, "while the a10 is a fine basketball conference - the mvc outdrew it last year..."

broy said "maybe so, but let's look at bottom line revenue. the printout i have in front of me says that the a-10 earned $4.7 million from the ncaa alone. now we know for a fact they have a more lucrative espn deal than the mvc has, so not sure where you are going with the attendance thing other than to make sure we know that there isnt much to do in cedar rapids maybe."

cmon roy - fan support matters and you know that. people have been slamming the mvc - i am just sticking up for the conference a little.

bluejay said, "the bills do not fit in geographically and this doesn't bode well for the conference's future. if history tells us anything these conferences with large geographical spreads fail (Old WAC, CUSA, etc)."

broy said "i think if this was 1940 and plane rides were not sensible for a college team, you might have a point. still it isnt as bad as you make out as there are other midwest teams and like has been mentioned time and time again by various posters, a bus ride to evansville might take longer than a plane ride to philly."

it isn't like the WAC or CUSA broke up 60 years ago. these have fallen apart in the last 5-10 years. the issue is travel for non rev sports, fan interest, natural rivalries, etc. these are issues for SLU and the a10 whether you want to admit this or not.

bluejay said, "again - staying in CUSA would not be the smart move and the a10 is really the only option for SLU."

broy said "glad to see you finally say that."

i have been saying that all along - scroll up a few posts - it's there.

blue jay said, "what should have happened is that when the great midwest broke up - the basketball only schools should have gotten together with creighton, bradley, butler etc - and formed the midwestern private league..."

or the papal league we have all pined for should have happened. no denying that. notre dame might still make that come true if they agree to head to the acc.

we agree.

Broy said "bottom line bluejay, you know as well as us that the mvc isnt right. and to be honest you should be p!ssed that your beloved jays are stuck in it."

grass isn't always greener. while most jays fans have the higher aspriations to be member of new and higher profile confernece - i am glad that our admin has been patient and waited for the right opportunity. do you think that the bills bouncing around from conf to conf the last 10 years has been good for SLU and its fans? someday CU will have a new home and it will be the right fit instead of quickly joining up to a league because current options are bleak.

as is - i do hope things work out in the a10 as i am a bills fan.

[billiken_roy]

if the question is a comparison of are the billikens better today for bouncing from the midwestern cities to the great midwest to conference usa, i say yes. each change was for a stronger more challenging conference that has only raised the bar. so yes, i think it has been good. now if your question is that maybe if the billikens had waited and stayed in the midwestern cities conference, a better offer would have come along, well, what might that have been? staying in the midwestern cities sure wouldnt have been good. that would mean that likely now the billikens would be on par with say the university of detroit and in the horizon conference. which btw would be better than the mvc.

[slufanskip]

Actually I think the bouncing around has worked ... We are in CUSA and play a very good schedule every year, something which you say your Jays can't get done.

Maybe if you had "bounced around" you might have played a stronger schedule and gotten a higher seed in the tourney and advanced further.

Many of the same schools with us now were also in the GMC ... so we have in a way been stable.

[Quality Is Job 1]

cujaysfan wrote, "Do you think that the bills bouncing around from conf to conf the last 10 years has been good for SLU and its fans?"

Actually, "Yes."

When I first started following college basketball in 1988-89, SLU was a member of the MCC (nka Horizon). As a homer, I had to adopt Missouri and SLU as my teams, but as Missouri was on t.v. far more, on a much stronger radio station, and the recipient of greater newspaper coverage, Missouri was, by far, my favorite. In fact, I didn't even really discover SLU until Missouri was eliminated from the NCAA Tournament by Syracuse and SLU was still playing in the NIT. Only then did I make the effort to receive the weak SLU radio broadcasts, and I didn't even know who the players were (compared to my solid familiarity with Mizzou's Doug Smith, Byron Irvin, etc.) (In retrospect, I feel it is quite a shame, because I totally missed out on Monroe Douglass and Roland Gray.)

The next year my following of the two teams was closer to even, and I knew the players on both teams and listened to and/or watched all of the games of both teams as I could. Still, Mizzou was better and easier to follow, so in my heart I favored Missouri, at least a little bit. That year, 1990, Anthony Bonner again led SLU to the title game of the NIT, playing long after the much-heralded, once-number-one-ranked Tigers got ousted by Northern Iowa (of the MVC) in the first round of the Tournament. Much less knowledgeable about college hoops then, I didn't quite understand just how much SLU, who was better than UNI, was getting shafted by being a member of the lowly MCC. Back then, I didn't know much about RPI, mid-major, SOS, and "guarantee" games, etc.

But then SLU announced that it would be joining the brand new Great Midwest Conference along with Cincinnati, Memphis, Marquette, DePaul, and UAB for the 1991-92 season. Then Julian Winfield headlined an exciting recruiting class. Pretty much immediately, SLU's media exposure improved. The difference between Missouri and SLU, in my heart, diminished significantly.

The formation of Conference USA four years later didn't really represent a change in conference, really. It was more of a merger with the Metro. Dayton, which was a member of the GMW for just the last one or two years of the league's four-year existence, if I'm not mistaken, was the only school left out. To me it just felt that things were getting better and better for SLU, because now it was a member of a superconference (this was happening about the same time as the Big Eight was taking on four SWC teams to become the Big XII). Missouri and SLU were virtual equals.

Anyway, to get back to the question at hand, as far as I'm concerned, SLU has been a member of one conference -- one that has grown (note that C-USA didn't have to wait for an automatic bid, which I think the GMW never had, not that it really mattered, as they got a deserving number of at-large bids every year) -- for the past 12 years. That means SLU hasn't bounced from conference to conference over the past 10 years. The only problem has been the change in focus of C-USA from basketball-driven to football-oriented. As a result, in two years SLU will likely change conferences for the second time since I've been following them (a 17-year span by that time), and the A-10 will be a better place to be than what C-USA will fall apart into. Since C-USA has been in existence, the A-10 has been just on its heels as one of the top conferences -- a high-major in the basketball world, in my estimation. Xavier, Dayton, Temple, St. Joseph's, UMass, and Rhode Island have experienced quite a bit of success -- beyond that of Creighton and Southern Illinois (and SMS). With C-USA falling a few notches in basketball prominence with the departures of Cincinnati, Louisville, Marquette, and DePaul (and SLU and Charlotte), the A-10 will leapfrog it such that it should regularly be in the top seven or eight conferences. Meanwhile, the MVC will be languishing back down in the teens, comparable to the level SLU was at when my love for college hoops started. SLU's program has improved very much since I started following it; I have no desire to see it return to the dark days of when I first picked them up. Knowing what I know now, it would be infuriating, rather than simply blissful (as in "ignorance is..."), that SLU could win 20 regular-season games but be relegated to the NIT all because it didn't win its conference tourney in a middling league.

While SLU has a ways to go, it has come a long way and can't go back -- not even to wait out more changes (which may not happen).

A-10, here come the Billikens; later for the Valley.

[davidlee]

thicks

Although you covered a lot of ground in your post it does lead to one thought. In my opinion, the MVC (and I like the conference) will get 1-2 bids a year to the big dance and the new A10 will most likely get 3-4 bids a year.

If the A10 only got 2 bids it would be a bad year, if the MVC gets 2 bids it is a good year

Just my thoughts.

[tseugnekillib]

If geography is a critical conference issue then Creighton, being located in Omaha, is screwed forever!