There's been much discussion on this board about how tough it is to schedule good home games if you're not a P5-school (really P6, as Big East is a Power conference).

But I disagree. Over the last 2 years, here's the home slates against P6 + ranked OOC teams for the American, PAC, and SEC. It clearly shows that stronger non-P6 programs are able to schedule good teams at home just as often as P6 schools.

Cincinnati: Iowa State, Xavier, Butler
Connecticut: Auburn, Ohio State, Georgetown (plus MSG games vs Syracuse and Maryland)
ECU: No P6 or ranked team
Houston: Rhode Island, LSU
Memphis: Mississippi, Oklahoma, South Carolina
SMU: TCU, Stanford, Michigan, Gonzaga
Temple: Villanova
Tulane: St. John's
Tulsa: Oklahoma State, Oregon State, Wichita State
UCF: No P6 or ranked team
USF: South Carolina, NC State

Wichita State: Oklahoma State, Utah (plus against Oklahoma in OKC)

Arizona: Missouri
Arizona State: Texas A&M, Creighton
Cal: Virginia (they also played ECU)
Colorado: Xavier
Oregon: Alabama, Baylor
Oregon State: No P6 or ranked team (they did play Tulsa at home though)
Stanford: SMU, Texas, Depaul
UCLA: Kentucky, Michigan
USC: SMU
Utah: Butler, BYU
Washington: TCU
Washington State: No P6 or ranked team

Alabama: No P6 or ranked team
Arkansas: Texas Tech (also played Houston)
Auburn: Oklahoma State, Colorado
Florida: Florida State, West Virginia
Georgia: Clemson, Georgia Tech, Kansas State, Texas, Marquette
Kentucky: Kansas, UCLA, Louisville, Arizona State
LSU: Wake Forest, Oklahoma (also played Houston)
Mississippi: Georgia Tech, Baylor (also played Memphis)
Mississippi State: Oregon State (also played Tulane)
Missouri: NC State, Arizona
South Carolina: Georgia Tech, Clemson, Michigan (also played Memphis and USF)
Tennessee: Georgia Tech, Kansas State
Texas A&M: Iowa State, Baylor, Kansas State, Southern Cal
Vanderbilt: Iowa State

Total home games against P6 and Ranked opponents:
American (including Wichita): 24 (plus 3 "neutral" games close to home)
PAC: 16 (plus 2 against non-ranked AAC teams)
SEC: 31 (plus 6 against non-ranked AAC teams)

If it weren't for the SEC's scheduling agreement with the Big 12, they'd have fewer "good" home games than the American does. And that's despite having more schools in their conference.

Problem was never UCONN or Cincy or even SMU

It's Tulane/ECU/UCF/USF/Tulsa convincing people to play them. It's a lose-lose situation for P6 programs to play them. Expected to win/if they do lose its a giant landmine RPI wise.

Those programs have to actually become as respected as UCONN and Cincy are before you will see programs take a chance on playing them

The willingness to go on the road to a non-power conference school in basketball is on more of a spectrum as opposed to a clearly defined line that you see in football between the P5 and G5. Part of it is that the sheer size of the non-conference schedule in basketball allows for more flexibility and the RPI formula provides additional credit for winning games on the road. In football, P5 schools generally only have 1 non-conference road game to utilize per year (and maybe 2 at the most) and all of the rankings are based *purely* on perception and the eye test.

The key to getting a P6 school to schedule a home and home is to be an attractive opponent that will sell tickets on their visit to the P6 arena.

To maximize RPI, P6 schools need to play some number of quality opponents out of conference. Quality schools can generally find quality opponents to schedule home and home. However, those schools that sell more tickets when they visit, either because they have a fan base that will travel to the P6 arena or because they are a name brand, are going to have more options.

In addition, most P6 schools have the option to schedule a one-off game, where they pay the visiting school a guaranty so there is no requirement for a return game. The P6 school has to compare playing two such games (over two seasons) to playing a home and home against someone. To justify playing a home and home series, the incremental revenue from the first home game needs to exceed the lost revenues from the second home game less the guaranty payments avoided.

There are 16 schools who fit the category of major, who are in Mid-major conferences, and another 11 who are pretty close, although 4 had weak attendance (small gym in San Francisco's case) so I dropped them:

American in "major" category as far as resources/budgets
#12 Memphis
#17 Connecticut
#43 Cincinnati
#53 Southern Methodist
#56 Wichita State *
#70 Tulsa
#76 Houston
#78 Temple

Other "majors":
#48 Gonzaga
#63 Saint Louis
#74 Brigham Young
#79 San Diego State
#82 Virginia Commonwealth
#86 Nevada-Las Vegas
#89 Dayton
#90 Richmond

High mid-majors (based on both attendance and budget)
#92 South Florida
#93 Grand Canyon
#94 Rhode Island
#95 Colorado State
#97 Saint Joseph's
#99 Alabama-Birmingham
#101 Massachusetts
** Tulane, San Francisco, Duquesne, and Fordham have high mid-major budgets, but attendance/arena is not to that level

There are several Mid-majors on smaller budgets who get strong attendance numbers (about 20 who get 4,500 or more per game) that could be considered.


I think it's important when asking the question about getting "Major Six" (M6) schools to visit "mid-major" schools if you look at their relative category. It's entirely different for a M6 to visit a Gonzaga, Memphis or Cincy than say an Indiana State or North Florida. You need to do a little sorting of the programs.

Note: 35 of 36 at-large bids came from the 91 "major" schools by budget (St. Mary's at #126 was the exception).

(04-06-2017 02:32 PM)orangefan Wrote:  The key to getting a P6 school to schedule a home and home is to be an attractive opponent that will sell tickets on their visit to the P6 arena.

To maximize RPI, P6 schools need to play some number of quality opponents out of conference. Quality schools can generally find quality opponents to schedule home and home. However, those schools that sell more tickets when they visit, either because they have a fan base that will travel to the P6 arena or because they are a name brand, are going to have more options.

In addition, most P6 schools have the option to schedule a one-off game, where they pay the visiting school a guaranty so there is no requirement for a return game. The P6 school has to compare playing two such games (over two seasons) to playing a home and home against someone. To justify playing a home and home series, the incremental revenue from the first home game needs to exceed the lost revenues from the second home game less the guaranty payments avoided.

Yes, Gonzaga is the perfect example of this of a school from a non-power conference that now has legit ticket selling power. 20 years ago (when they first started their ascent), they would play anyone anywhere at any time, including many one-and-done guarantee road games, to build up their brand name. Within a decade, they built up enough brand equity that they could start demanding power conference schools to at least play them on a neutral court (e.g. games in Seattle). Finally, they're at the point where they can get even blue blood programs like UCLA to go on true road games to Spokane. It's going to be even easier now that they've made a national title game appearance.

The thing is that this didn't happen overnight. It took nearly two decades from when Gonzaga entered into the nation's consciousness as a Cinderella in 1999 to where they could get UCLA to play a true road game in Spokane. I think a lot of non-power schools seem to want to skip the "play anyone anywhere at any time" phase that Gonzaga went through even after their 1999 Elite Eight run, which simply isn't realistic.

(04-06-2017 02:10 PM)Captain Bearcat Wrote:  Alabama: No P6 or ranked team

To be fair Alabama could have played this year's Clemson game at home as that was what the contract called for but chose to move it to Birmingham for the Vulcan Classic instead. Ironically neither team played in it's true home arena during the two game series as Alabama played Clemson @ Greenville in 2015 due to construction at Littlejohn Coliseum.

(04-06-2017 02:47 PM)Stugray2 Wrote:  There are 16 schools who fit the category of major, who are in Mid-major conferences, and another 11 who are pretty close, although 4 had weak attendance (small gym in San Francisco's case) so I dropped them:

American in "major" category as far as resources/budgets
#12 Memphis
#17 Connecticut
#43 Cincinnati
#53 Southern Methodist
#56 Wichita State *
#70 Tulsa
#76 Houston
#78 Temple

Other "majors":
#48 Gonzaga
#63 Saint Louis
#74 Brigham Young
#79 San Diego State
#82 Virginia Commonwealth
#86 Nevada-Las Vegas
#89 Dayton
#90 Richmond

High mid-majors (based on both attendance and budget)
#92 South Florida
#93 Grand Canyon
#94 Rhode Island
#95 Colorado State
#97 Saint Joseph's
#99 Alabama-Birmingham
#101 Massachusetts
** Tulane, San Francisco, Duquesne, and Fordham have high mid-major budgets, but attendance/arena is not to that level

There are several Mid-majors on smaller budgets who get strong attendance numbers (about 20 who get 4,500 or more per game) that could be considered.


I think it's important when asking the question about getting "Major Six" (M6) schools to visit "mid-major" schools if you look at their relative category. It's entirely different for a M6 to visit a Gonzaga, Memphis or Cincy than say an Indiana State or North Florida. You need to do a little sorting of the programs.

Note: 35 of 36 at-large bids came from the 91 "major" schools by budget (St. Mary's at #126 was the exception).

I would add:
UTEP: big arena, good attendence, gets P6 home games regularly, NCAA championship
NM St: big arena, gets P6 home games, regular NCAA tournaments, get some big 12 and PAC 12 games regularly. Decent attendance for a horrid conference
New Mexico: big arena, over 50 straight seasons of top 25 attendence, host Arizona and PAC 12 schools regularly. Bad season and still gets 12k to games.
I would remove:
Grand Canyon: not even a real school. Gimmicks to attract attendees; no success
South Florida: attendence issues; not much success; only a couple NCAA tournaments so far in their history
Richmond: small arena; low attendance; Not a lot of NCAA tournament bids.

From a coach's perspective, the decision whether or not to play a true road game (ie, not a neutral-site or early season tournament game) at a non-power-conference team depends on whether a loss to that team would be regarded by the tournament committee as a bad loss. So they'll play at Gonzaga, for example, with no worries in that regard.

From a power conference AD's perspective, it's not only what the coach wants but also money (you want as many home games as possible), and whether your boosters or someone else would get pissy if you give a home game to a non-power team, or to a local non-power team (eg you probably won't see Duke playing on the road at Appalachian State).

Utah State, UTEP, Fresno State, Hawai'i, Weber State, ODU, Nevada, Boise State, Seinna, Bradley, Wyoming, Ohio, UNI, SIU, Illinois State, Marshall, MTSU, and Evansville all have solid 5000+ attendance averages but smaller budgets. NMSU, Wright State and Charlotte are not far from that

I just didn't list these schools. Lumped them all in the "20 or so" with good attendance on smaller budgets.

Which is why Cal went to UC Santa Barbara in 2013, and USC and Oregon State did in 2015. It can be done

(04-06-2017 02:30 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  The willingness to go on the road to a non-power conference school in basketball is on more of a spectrum as opposed to a clearly defined line that you see in football between the P5 and G5. Part of it is that the sheer size of the non-conference schedule in basketball allows for more flexibility and the RPI formula provides additional credit for winning games on the road. In football, P5 schools generally only have 1 non-conference road game to utilize per year (and maybe 2 at the most) and all of the rankings are based *purely* on perception and the eye test.

True, and that topic has been addressed before, and the this was the conclusion that was arrived at: the P5 likes the system as it is, and wishes that college basketball would do the same, regardless of what the tv partners think. ESPN wants no changes to the status quo, but with Disney already issuing orders for cutbacks, ESPN might be desperate enough to gamble some on basketball.

South Carolina went to Memphis and USF this year.

Under the previous regime we actually played at several Big South and SoCon schools.

Yep. College of Charleston frequently hosts P6 schools. LSU, Tennessee, North Carolina, Clemson, South Carolina and Louisville have all played here within the last 9 years. And that doesn't include the Charleston Classic, where they've played UCF, Temple, Wake Forest, St. John's, and Auburn among others in the 3 times they've played that tourney.

With their situation they might be considered an upper midmajor.

(04-06-2017 02:48 PM)Frank the Tank Wrote:  

(04-06-2017 02:32 PM)orangefan Wrote:  The key to getting a P6 school to schedule a home and home is to be an attractive opponent that will sell tickets on their visit to the P6 arena.

To maximize RPI, P6 schools need to play some number of quality opponents out of conference. Quality schools can generally find quality opponents to schedule home and home. However, those schools that sell more tickets when they visit, either because they have a fan base that will travel to the P6 arena or because they are a name brand, are going to have more options.

In addition, most P6 schools have the option to schedule a one-off game, where they pay the visiting school a guaranty so there is no requirement for a return game. The P6 school has to compare playing two such games (over two seasons) to playing a home and home against someone. To justify playing a home and home series, the incremental revenue from the first home game needs to exceed the lost revenues from the second home game less the guaranty payments avoided.

Yes, Gonzaga is the perfect example of this of a school from a non-power conference that now has legit ticket selling power. 20 years ago (when they first started their ascent), they would play anyone anywhere at any time, including many one-and-done guarantee road games, to build up their brand name. Within a decade, they built up enough brand equity that they could start demanding power conference schools to at least play them on a neutral court (e.g. games in Seattle). Finally, they're at the point where they can get even blue blood programs like UCLA to go on true road games to Spokane. It's going to be even easier now that they've made a national title game appearance.

The thing is that this didn't happen overnight. It took nearly two decades from when Gonzaga entered into the nation's consciousness as a Cinderella in 1999 to where they could get UCLA to play a true road game in Spokane. I think a lot of non-power schools seem to want to skip the "play anyone anywhere at any time" phase that Gonzaga went through even after their 1999 Elite Eight run, which simply isn't realistic.

I think this is the key.

Respect is earned over time, not just in a one-year fluke performance. Why should a newly rising mid-major expect a handout (i.e. a sellout crowd and some national attention if you win) from a school that has invested hundreds of millions in facilities and brand equity over decades? The UCLAs and Indianas of the world (or Alabama and Ohio State in football) have invested too much to waste a precious game on traveling to a tiny arena that won't even get on national TV.

I think that it depends on the situation and I will use Akron as an example. We could not get anyone to play a 'True' Home Game. The closest I could remember was West Virginia, but that was at the Richfield Coliseum many moons ago. Strong Mid-Majors(Sans Gonzaga) have a very difficult time getting strong programs to visit in their place

*Question: Didn't WVU play a bizarre game at a weird school in the last couple of years for family reasons?

(04-07-2017 06:27 PM)lance99 Wrote:  I think that it depends on the situation and I will use Akron as an example. We could not get anyone to play a 'True' Home Game. The closest I could remember was West Virginia, but that was at the Richfield Coliseum many moons ago. Strong Mid-Majors(Sans Gonzaga) have a very difficult time getting strong programs to visit in their place

*Question: Didn't WVU play a bizarre game at a weird school in the last couple of years for family reasons?

Why should, say, Purdue go visit Akron? It costs money to travel, it takes a toll on players, and Purdue would take a financial hit from having one fewer home game. One-third of the fans at the game would be Boilermaker fans, and it would still be the smallest crowd Purdue would play in front of all year. And in most years the NCAA selection committee would crucify the Boilers if they lost.

In other words, it'd be a pure handout to Akron.

Akron has had some good seasons over the past few years, and they have a good coach. But when Akron starts consistently beating Horizon League schools (1-2 last two years) and drawing more than 3,351 fans per game, then we can talk about there being some upside for Purdue (or Xavier, or Pitt) making a visit to Akron.

(04-07-2017 06:27 PM)lance99 Wrote:  *Question: Didn't WVU play a bizarre game at a weird school in the last couple of years for family reasons?

They played at NKU three years ago. I think that's what you're talking about. I think people decided it was because Huggins' nephew played for NKU.

There was a thread about this at the time: http://www.csnbbs.com/thread-719522-page-2.html

During the 2011-12 season Miami played at D2 Saginaw Valley State, allowing coach Charlie Coles to provide perhaps his last great post-game press conference.

Quote:But I think Saginaw Valley was spirited. And I was glad that we gave them this opportunity to play a Division 1 school. Very seldom does a team that's supposed to be higher than you comes to your court. And I don't like that about college basketball, that a Michigan won't go to Western Michigan. They'll sign a 5-year deal and say "we'll never come." I never did get that...Gene Keady and Bobby Knight used to come to Miami, but they don't make 'em like that no more.

The big boys want more than an advantage. They're like deer hunters. I have nothing against deer hunters, but you know when you hunt deer, there's not even a remote chance that the deer is going to get you. I want to see a guy go against lions and elephants and bears."

And he's right about that. Millett Hall has hosted teams from Kentucky to IU to Purdue to Notre Dame to a bunch of others I'm missing, not to mention local rivals like Dayton, Xavier, and UC regularly. That'll never happen now, even though not being able to get home-and-homes with any teams of that caliber nowadays is basically our fault with how bad we are. But even solid MAC programs like Akron and Ohio can't ever convince a power conference team to visit them.

(04-09-2017 02:28 PM)Love and Honor Wrote:  During the 2011-12 season Miami played at D2 Saginaw Valley State, allowing coach Charlie Coles to provide perhaps his last great post-game press conferences.

Quote:But I think Saginaw Valley was spirited. And I was glad that we gave them this opportunity to play a Division 1 school. Very seldom does a team that's supposed to be higher than you comes to your court. And I don't like that about college basketball, that a Michigan won't go to Western Michigan. They'll sign a 5-year deal and say "we'll never come." I never did get that...Gene Keady and Bobby Knight used to come to Miami, but they don't make 'em like that no more.

The big boys want more than an advantage. They're like deer hunters. I have nothing against deer hunters, but you know when you hunt deer, there's not even a remote chance that the deer is going to get you. I want to see a guy go against lions and elephants and bears."

And he's right about that. Millett Hall has hosted teams from Kentucky to IU to Purdue to Notre Dame to bunch of others I'm missing, not to mention local rivals like Dayton, Xavier, and UC regularly. That'll never happen now, even though not being able to get home-and-homes with any teams of that caliber nowadays is basically our fault with how bad we are. But even solid MAC programs like Akron and Ohio can't ever convince a power conference team to visit them.

I think in Miami's case, they used to be able to draw bigger schools because they had a better program. Miami won something like half of the regular season MAC championships before 2005, but has won zero since then.

It's a darn shame what's happened to Miami athletics over the past decade.