RE: Too many conferences in basketball
The value of the bottom 18 one bid conferences is that they give the top 16 seeds, on average 14 from the 6 majors, a virtual bye. Even with an upset or two in there, that represents a lot of extra NCAA credits for those conferences, $$$.
And this is the way they manage them. They force them through the grinder, one and done, one and done, one and done. Maybe one gets lucky and wins one, but so what. These extra 100-150 schools also provide win padding, like Omaha did tonight for KU (109-64).
If you did decide to cut schools, budget is probably the best way. Since all 75 Majors spend over $5M (except Butler at $4.833M), dividing by three from that figure would be a good cut line, say $1.6M or 245 schools, with 103 being cut.
Bye bye SWAC, MEAC, Ivy League, SLC (save SFA and just barely TAMU-CC), Big South (save Liberty and High Point), tSL (save Denver and ORU), the OVC (save Belmont, Murray, EKU), AEC (save Stony Brook, Hartford, and just barely Albany). Others would lose a slew of members: 6 of 12 Sunbelt below the line, 5 of 11 NEC, 6 of 11 Big Sky (I scored UND with tSL), 3 of 8 WAC, 5 of 10 SoCon, 2 of 10 tHL (IUPUI, YSU), 2 of 8 ASUN (KSU, UNF). Some individual schools in conferences also get hit, Lehigh (Patriot), Cal State Fullerton (Big West), and St. Peter's (MAAC) also are below the line.
That could clear anywhere from 6 to 12 conferences. Of course funny accounting would come in and maybe fifty schools would suddenly surge spending on MBB $500K or more to get above the cut line. So it's more an observation that actionable criteria.
But IMO why bother, the M6 have figured out how to make extra money off these schools.
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