If I'm the commissioner of the Big Sky conference, here's my goal for basketball. Get one team into the Big Dance, a team good enough for a shot at the Sweet 16, a la Gonzaga or Wichita, who put their conferences on the map. This brings the conference some recognition. It brings the conference some bucks. It might in the future allow a second team to be considered for the dance. Remember, one great team in a conference lifts all boats, as we did in football.
So what does the Big Stupid do?
It puts all kinds of hurdles in the path of this ever happening. Here's how.
--A 20-game conference schedule. This shortens the non-conference schedule, where one team might have a chance to increase its RPI, or pull a major non-conference upset. Conference? No way. Twenty conference games assures a low RPI and a low seed.
--A post-season tournament at a neutral site. Sure, this makes sense for the larger conferences, who play in a major venue like New York or Las Vegas, get big TV bucks, and are assured several of their teams advance to the Big Dance. The while the Big Stupid picks a neutral site in a backwater city that doesn't want and never will support such a tournament, foregoing the one venue that would have great appeal--the home court of the conference champion.
--Ensures that the conference champion, for winning a 20-game conference schedule with all its brutal travel, then has to turn around and win another three games in consecutive nights on a NEUTRAL court. The near-disaster against Northern Colorado is just the kind of stinken game even a great team can have, especially against a lower seed that suddenly gets hot in the tournament.
If I'm the commissioner, I cut the post-season to six teams. If you can't make the top six over a 20-game conference schedule, why do you deserve to be in the post-season? Why should you get a participation trophy?
I move the tournament back to the champion's home court. If they've won the conference title, they deserve it. The top two get a first-round bye, meaning you can win the entire tournament in two games rather than three, leaving your champion fresh for the Big Dance.
If this favors Montana and Weber, so be it. They should be favored. Because right now, I don't see any other school performing well enough at the Big Dance to get this conference out of the rut its stuck in when it comes to basketball.
So what does the Big Stupid do?
It puts all kinds of hurdles in the path of this ever happening. Here's how.
--A 20-game conference schedule. This shortens the non-conference schedule, where one team might have a chance to increase its RPI, or pull a major non-conference upset. Conference? No way. Twenty conference games assures a low RPI and a low seed.
--A post-season tournament at a neutral site. Sure, this makes sense for the larger conferences, who play in a major venue like New York or Las Vegas, get big TV bucks, and are assured several of their teams advance to the Big Dance. The while the Big Stupid picks a neutral site in a backwater city that doesn't want and never will support such a tournament, foregoing the one venue that would have great appeal--the home court of the conference champion.
--Ensures that the conference champion, for winning a 20-game conference schedule with all its brutal travel, then has to turn around and win another three games in consecutive nights on a NEUTRAL court. The near-disaster against Northern Colorado is just the kind of stinken game even a great team can have, especially against a lower seed that suddenly gets hot in the tournament.
If I'm the commissioner, I cut the post-season to six teams. If you can't make the top six over a 20-game conference schedule, why do you deserve to be in the post-season? Why should you get a participation trophy?
I move the tournament back to the champion's home court. If they've won the conference title, they deserve it. The top two get a first-round bye, meaning you can win the entire tournament in two games rather than three, leaving your champion fresh for the Big Dance.
If this favors Montana and Weber, so be it. They should be favored. Because right now, I don't see any other school performing well enough at the Big Dance to get this conference out of the rut its stuck in when it comes to basketball.