Indirectly related news...

...today the Big 10+4 announced it is going to move to 20 conference games starting with the '18-'19 season.

The ACC announced about a year ago it will be moving to a 20 game schedule starting with the '19-'20 season primarily to provide more inventory to ESPN as it kicks off its new network starting that school year in fall of 2019.

I will not be surprised to see the SEC and/or Pac 12 follow suit at some point. The Big 12-2 already plays a round-robin 18-game schedule and will likely stay that way.

This may be good news for the networks and fans of these conferences/schools, but it isn't good news for the rest of college hoops (IMO). Especially if the SEC & Pac 12 take away another potential 52 or so games that have been mostly scheduled with mid-majors or smaller conferences.

The excellent CBB blogger, Chris Dobbertean, shared an email with me not too long ago advising he won't be surprised if more of the P5 programs eventually start avoiding the early season tournaments at neutral sites (e.g., Bahamas, Vegas, Cancun, etc.). His hypothesis is that they will ditch those and replace with home games for revenue-generation purposes. ESPN funds most of these early season tournaments though so we'll see...