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http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2013/...sprin.html

1 - Having all 16 teams for men's and women's basketball participate in the C-USA Basketball Championship, making it a five-day format.

2 - Increasing the field size of fall championships for volleyball to 12, women's soccer to 10 and men's soccer to seven.

3 - Scheduling men's basketball games with travel partners and conference games played on Thursdays and Saturdays.

4 - Scheduling women's basketball games on Wednesdays and Saturdays.


Lotsa tourney basketball games. No byes? No info on number of conference games???
Wed games typically hurt attendance so the men's basketball will benefit. The women's teams, though...

Baseball Championship location TBD...Come on Barons and Regions Field...

16 conference games for basketball has already been announced.

(05-15-2013 01:53 PM)WesternBlazer Wrote:  http://www.al.com/sports/index.ssf/2013/...sprin.html

1 - Having all 16 teams for men's and women's basketball participate in the C-USA Basketball Championship, making it a five-day format.

2 - Increasing the field size of fall championships for volleyball to 12, women's soccer to 10 and men's soccer to seven.

3 - Scheduling men's basketball games with travel partners and conference games played on Thursdays and Saturdays.

4 - Scheduling women's basketball games on Wednesdays and Saturdays.


Lotsa tourney basketball games. No byes? No info on number of conference games???
Wed games typically hurt attendance so the men's basketball will benefit. The women's teams, though...

Baseball Championship location TBD...Come on Barons and Regions Field...

GOD ANSWERS PRAYERS!!!!!!! HALLELUJAH!

(05-15-2013 02:33 PM)BeliefBlazer Wrote:  16 conference games for basketball has already been announced.

Any specifics? Divisional setup? Travel partners? Schedule makeup - who's home and home and who gets a single game? How is this decided? etc...

With 16 teams, 15 possible conference games, some teams will not play yearly if home-and-homes happen..

A 16 team tournament with no byes is strange. I'm guessing the first round over two days, which means some teams will get a days rest and others won't. I think I would have preferred a 12 team tourney.

You want the tourney to get your best teams the best seeds in the NCAA. I'm not sure this will do that.

Who will be hosting this monster and what will they do the following year.

Thank goodness for Thursday night games instead of Wednesday night.

(05-15-2013 03:12 PM)Memphis Blazer Wrote:  A 16 team tournament with no byes is strange. I'm guessing the first round over two days, which means some teams will get a days rest and others won't. I think I would have preferred a 12 team tourney.

You want the tourney to get your best teams the best seeds in the NCAA. I'm not sure this will do that.

Who will be hosting this monster and what will they do the following year.

agreed.

Only the top 12 teams shoud get a chance. The bottom 4 teams need to save their travel money for recruiting anyway.

(05-15-2013 03:19 PM)BlazerPhil Wrote:  

(05-15-2013 03:12 PM)Memphis Blazer Wrote:  A 16 team tournament with no byes is strange. I'm guessing the first round over two days, which means some teams will get a days rest and others won't. I think I would have preferred a 12 team tourney.

You want the tourney to get your best teams the best seeds in the NCAA. I'm not sure this will do that.

Who will be hosting this monster and what will they do the following year.

agreed.

Only the top 12 teams shoud get a chance. The bottom 4 teams need to save their travel money for recruiting anyway.

I agree too. The bottom 4 teams are likely going to have terrible RPI's, and all they will offer is a chance for one of the top 4 teams to take a terrible loss with the whole world watching for a reason to keep any of these teams out of the tournament. Terrible. Every team does not have to be involved in the tournament, and the regular season should mean something.

I'm thinking the 16-team setup is a 1-year deal to get the new teams acclimated, especially since some teams may not play each other at all during the regular season. After next year when teams have departed for the AAC we will be down to 14 total teams, so perhaps we go back to 12 game tourney.

(05-15-2013 03:19 PM)BlazerPhil Wrote:  

(05-15-2013 03:12 PM)Memphis Blazer Wrote:  A 16 team tournament with no byes is strange. I'm guessing the first round over two days, which means some teams will get a days rest and others won't. I think I would have preferred a 12 team tourney.

You want the tourney to get your best teams the best seeds in the NCAA. I'm not sure this will do that.

Who will be hosting this monster and what will they do the following year.

agreed.

Only the top 12 teams shoud get a chance. The bottom 4 teams need to save their travel money for recruiting anyway.

The top four teams hopefully will be trying to improve their RPI and get in the RPI. The bottom four teams are going to be RPI killers. They will be forced to play each other.

It's idiocy.

Regions Field, UAB, and the city of Birmingham need to bid for the baseball tournament. That field is too nice to not have some type of tournament in it. Plus, it would give us a home advantage.

(05-15-2013 03:06 PM)WesternBlazer Wrote:  

(05-15-2013 02:33 PM)BeliefBlazer Wrote:  16 conference games for basketball has already been announced.

Any specifics? Divisional setup? Travel partners? Schedule makeup - who's home and home and who gets a single game? How is this decided? etc...

With 16 teams, 15 possible conference games, some teams will not play yearly if home-and-homes happen..

No divisions. Every team will play every other team at least once; round robin plus one H&H. The home and home scheduling philosophy hasn't been announced. Still a few things they haven't announced, like how they decide who has to go out to El Paso without a return game.

Having Thursday night home games should help with attendance so all the Wednesday night church crowd can come to the games.

I agree on having the CUSA baseball tourny at Region's Field. Would be tough to go head to head with the SEC tourny though.

Having all teams included in a16 team format means that a new team will not be excluded while a defector team is included. We need to figure a format that allows schools to sell championship ticket packages to their fans that travel as they know all teams will be included.
14-16 teams selling 300 ticket packages on average means 4-6000 tickets sold each year.
A 13-15 game(26-30 if women's games are included) would sell for about $2-300.
This would mean about $1-2 million in ticket revenue for league. Sponsors would also know in advance that all markets would be included in any TV deals.
That being said, we need to protect top 4 teams as well. In a 14 team format top 2 get byes .
With a 16 team format top 4 could get double byes and second 4 could get 1 bye.
Day one 16-9, 15-10, 14-11, 13-12. Day two 16-9 vs 8, 15-10 vs7, 14-11 vs 6, 13-12 vs 5.
Day three 1 vs 16-9-8, 2 vs15-10-7, 3 vs 14-11-6, and 4 vs 13-12-5.
Day four semis and day five championship. Top 4 protected and all teams get invite.
If I went to watch Blazers, and they were winning, I'd stay to watch all days.

UAB's mirror game and I am guessing travel partner will be MTSU.

Both games need to be on a Saturday.

(05-15-2013 03:12 PM)Memphis Blazer Wrote:  A 16 team tournament with no byes is strange. I'm guessing the first round over two days, which means some teams will get a days rest and others won't. I think I would have preferred a 12 team tourney.

You want the tourney to get your best teams the best seeds in the NCAA. I'm not sure this will do that.

Who will be hosting this monster and what will they do the following year.

UTEP is hosting it this year. Next year C-USA will be back down to 14 and likely only the top 12 will participate. I hope we don't have play-in games so that all 14 can participate.

(05-15-2013 03:42 PM)BeliefBlazer Wrote:  

(05-15-2013 03:06 PM)WesternBlazer Wrote:  

(05-15-2013 02:33 PM)BeliefBlazer Wrote:  16 conference games for basketball has already been announced.

Any specifics? Divisional setup? Travel partners? Schedule makeup - who's home and home and who gets a single game? How is this decided? etc...

With 16 teams, 15 possible conference games, some teams will not play yearly if home-and-homes happen..

No divisions. Every team will play every other team at least once; round robin plus one H&H. The home and home scheduling philosophy hasn't been announced. Still a few things they haven't announced, like how they decide who has to go out to El Paso without a return game.

I'm guessing the mirror games and travel partners will be the same. Here's my WAG at it:

FIU-FAU
Charlotte-ECU
Marshall-Old Dominion
UAB-MTSU
Southern Miss-Tulane
Louisiana Tech-Rice
North Texas-Tulsa
UTEP-UTSA (they are the closest at a mere 553 miles)

(05-16-2013 01:51 PM)ATTALLABLAZE Wrote:  UAB's mirror game and I am guessing travel partner will be MTSU.

Both games need to be on a Saturday.

That's how the Pac-12 model works.

Twice a year, you won't play a mid-week conference game and you play your mirror team on Saturday.