(07-22-2019 06:55 PM)herdfan129 Wrote: Marshall and the CUSA East teams are most upset with the focus of this conference being so centered around Texas more than we are upset with sharing a conference with teams from Texas.
The best fan bases for basketball are in the East and/or used to be in the East (UAB/So Miss).
For some reason our conference thinks its a good idea to host the basketball tournament in Texas. Such a joke to say the least. You have Marshall, ODU, WKU all averaging 6k+ per game. MTSU, UAB, Charlotte all have solid fan bases in terms of basketball, especially if they are winning. Yet we have the basketball tournament in friggin Texas where most of the teams average like 2,500/game in basketball. Absolutely ridiculous and the Eastern based teams (the stronger overall programs) are getting fed up with it.
that is a legit concern one of the main issues is in the DFW area so many of those smaller cities are aggressive about pulling away sports and sporting events from the horribly run city of dallas proper that they even get hyper aggressive to land other events outside of the ones they pull from the city of dallas proper
you have to wonder how aggressive CUSA was about talking to other areas be it Shreveport, Nashville, Charlotte, or any other about what they would be willing to do
the other issue is wanting a "neutral" site.....but yet are you willing to go to Atlanta, Memphis or some similar area that has a team or teams from some other conference there (of course DFW has two and three if you count UTA when talking about mens BB)
from there do you try and make members (and their cities) bid to host the tournament if you are willing to forgo the "neutral site"......sadly at all levels of the NCAA most college towns are content to ride the coat tails of their university and not bid aggressively for things like conference tournaments
I think you raise a legit issue though and one has to wonder what the financial trade off is vs getting money from Frisco to be there vs any additional tickets that might be sold at a different venue closer to the CUSA basketball schools
plus you have to calculate the exposure from larger fan support even if it is lesser straight dollars
I am not sure how the money would all work out (especially with the exposure and general good will of more fans calculated in), but I would suspect the bigger issue is the CUSA has really not run any analysis on any of that and took the most simple way out and that is "this place offered us money so we went there" and that was the lump sum of the cost benefit analysis
one can actually look at the D1-AA football final game in Frisco as an example.....a lot wondered how well that would go, but they got lucky that North Dakota has played there so much with their large fan support and the fact that it is ButtA cold in ND at that time and DFW is a tropical paradise to them
so on the back of that fan support the event is considered a success even to other teams fans because they now want to go there too
but the CUSA is not getting close to the same response with the basketball tournament (even considering it is a conference mens BB tournament not a national championship game) so you have to wonder if some other location could get that fan support and become a bigger overall event