CSNbbs

Fifteen schools I know and not sure how it happens.
The WCC and Big East seem to like having all basketball focused privates.

Why ditch current rivals, scrap popular easy-to-get-to conference tournaments, balloon travel expenses, and play in places you don’t draw students from?

Yeah let’s retire the Battle of Richmond and War on 74 for Drake-Richmond and Bradley-Fordham.

(02-01-2019 09:44 PM)CoastalVANDAL Wrote: [ -> ]Fifteen schools I know and not sure how it happens.

Leave out LaSalle and its an even 14.



The 5 privates of the Midwest could be joined by Dayton/SLU to make a division of 7.

Would love to see non-football schools be in the same conference. MVC football schools would love that and invite the Summit football schools, Youngstown State and Murray State.

Even in this scenario I see Fordham eventually moving everything to the Patriot League.

Private Conference (15; pods for scheduling purposes only)
West - St. Louis, Drake, Bradley, Loyola-Chicago, Valparaiso
North - St. Joseph's, La Salle, Duquesne, St. Bonaventure, Fordham
South - Davidson, George Washington, Richmond, Evansville, Dayton

Public Conference (9)
Northern Iowa, Missouri State, Southern Illinois, Illinois State, Indiana State, George Mason, VCU, Rhode Island, UMass

I'm not sure how UMass and Rhode Island would feel about being in a conference with "directional" schools in the Midwest - America East might be a better institutional fit, aside from UMass-Lowell being a member of that conference. If UMass were willing to accept this, they might as well join C-USA for all sports.

(02-01-2019 09:44 PM)CoastalVANDAL Wrote: [ -> ]Fifteen schools I know and not sure how it happens.
The WCC and Big East seem to like having all basketball focused privates.

Not really.

Many of the best basketball schools in both conferences are public schools. Why would you ditch them?

Other than Fordham and maybe Evansville, there's not much deadweight in either conference. Better to keep the geographic alignment.

Bradley
Dayton
Detroit
Drake
Duquesne
Evansville
Loyola
Saint Louis
Valparaiso
Don't know for #10

If Big East expansion door was slammed shut for Dayton and Saint Louis, maybe this would take hold. Personally I think this would have been more likely to have happened if Creighton and Butler didn't get the Big East tickets and Dayton and Saint Louis did.

(02-02-2019 11:55 AM)Captain Bearcat Wrote: [ -> ]

(02-01-2019 09:44 PM)CoastalVANDAL Wrote: [ -> ]Fifteen schools I know and not sure how it happens.
The WCC and Big East seem to like having all basketball focused privates.

Not really.

Many of the best basketball schools in both conferences are public schools. Why would you ditch them?

Other than Fordham and maybe Evansville, there's not much deadweight in either conference. Better to keep the geographic alignment.

And most of the A10 plays in glorified HS gyms. MVC generally draw much better.

(02-08-2019 09:27 PM)MissouriStateBears Wrote: [ -> ]Bradley
Dayton
Detroit
Drake
Duquesne
Evansville
Loyola
Saint Louis
Valparaiso
Don't know for #10

If Big East expansion door was slammed shut for Dayton and Saint Louis, maybe this would take hold. Personally I think this would have been more likely to have happened if Creighton and Butler didn't get the Big East tickets and Dayton and Saint Louis did.

I would keep the public non-football schools with these privates.

(02-08-2019 09:27 PM)MissouriStateBears Wrote: [ -> ]Bradley
Dayton
Detroit
Drake
Duquesne
Evansville
Loyola
Saint Louis
Valparaiso
Don't know for #10

That makes more geographic sense than having private schools in New York and eastern Pennsylvania go that far west. Detroit is a good choice as the only private school in the Horizon League. Other possibilities are Oral Roberts and Tulsa (both Christian schools in Tulsa) and Lipscomb (Christian) in Nashville. Both teams in Tulsa are in conferences with mostly public schools.

The public/private split seems like a fault line running through the MVC conference that they have to tip-toe around carefully. It seems like an amicable divorce might be the best option. But there are other reasons for a school to like a conference.

The MVC is very Illinois-centric. 7 of the 10 schools are in or are near Illinois. Drake get a lot of their tuition paying students from that area. I think they see their athletic program in part as a support for their student recruitment. I think Drake administrators might be nervous about a conference that weakens their presence in Illinois. I like the private conference in theory. But in the real world, there is more than basketball to consider.

(02-10-2019 10:56 AM)EvanJ Wrote: [ -> ]

(02-08-2019 09:27 PM)MissouriStateBears Wrote: [ -> ]Bradley
Dayton
Detroit
Drake
Duquesne
Evansville
Loyola
Saint Louis
Valparaiso
Don't know for #10

That makes more geographic sense than having private schools in New York and eastern Pennsylvania go that far west. Detroit is a good choice as the only private school in the Horizon League. Other possibilities are Oral Roberts and Tulsa (both Christian schools in Tulsa) and Lipscomb (Christian) in Nashville. Both teams in Tulsa are in conferences with mostly public schools.

Oral Roberts might go for it but no chance on Tulsa leaving the AAC and yearly games with Wichita State, SMU and Houston to be stranded with ORU on an island in a lesser, far-flung conference.

The lists make you guys are drawing up make no sense when you actually look at the schools

The eleven largest non-Football budgets (DoEd Equity in Athletics) are A10 when you compare all the MVC and A10 (plus a few others from Horizon and OVC). And it's not close. [1]

Davidson and La Salle budgets are significantly behind the other 11, with UIC, Bradley, Drake, Valpo and UDM (also Illinois State adjust) in the same range. (Belmont and LUC trail even La Salle)

What the numbers reveal is St. Bony doesn't belong in the A10, their budget is half Duqeusene's level (the bottom of the top 11). Evansville is equally low. St. Bony also has very low AI. As does La Salle. Evansville, Detroit Mercy and Valpo also have low AI. La Salle and St. Bony also have very low endowments as well ($88M and $60M respectively). UDM also has small endowment ($51.6M) and has been struggling as an institution due to a bad location.

Davidson, while only 75-80% of the desired budget A10 level, has a huge $821M endowment and the Highest Admission Index (AI), plus some decent success in Athletics. So they bring something to the table in prestige and success to make up for a shortfall in budget.

The only A10 "expansion" that makes any sense is a contraction to lose low resource St. Bony (poor and in the middle of nowhere) and La Salle (the 4th team in Philly behind 'nova, Temple and St. Joe's - who are also in the A10). You could possibly make a resource argument that UIC (high AI and $2.28B endowment) and Bradley (low AI but $1.5B endowment) might be worth considering. But neither moves the sports needle. Others are "Hey they got hot last year, so take them" kind of fan arguments that just make no long term sense.

Details make these plans discussed here silly. The A10 schools are across the board (with the two exceptions I pointed out) head and shoulders above every school in the MVC. No addition from the MVC, OVC or Horizon would slot above 13th slot in the A10. (Rule of thumb a school needs to slot in the top half of a conference both academically and athletically to be worth the bother).

Do some research before producing a list. The data is available online.








[1] Note, I had to adjust Illinois State and SIU-C as they had roughly double the other MVC schools "Not Allocated by Gender/Sport" category and a correspondingly low Football number -- this was inconsistent with every other school. When I shifted $5M of the $10M from that category to Football their numbers looked almost the same as the other Football MVC schools and also Northern Illinois. Clearly they are attempting to shift some football costs to make the number look lower (perhaps to claim a revenue profit from football).

Here is data for A10, and MVC. I also threw in a few Candidates from the OVC (Belmont, Murray State), Horizon and Summit (WIU was for comparison of Football to set the correct data for SIU and Illinois State) plus UDel (CAA) and Sienna College (MAAC).


As you can see La Salle and St. Bonaventure are definite negatives for the A10, and their Institutional values + attendance are both negative on my point scale. Duquesne is not much help either, rate only "2".

Note: none of the MVC schools crack the top 11 of the A10, really 12 with Davidson. But Davidson is very small student body and that shrinks the size of their budget. I think the A10 would like to see Davidson grow from 1,700 to 2,500 undergrads. That would probably move them up the list as far as budget goes. They are good bang for the buck.

If the A10 could ever jettison the dead weight three schools emerge as serious candidates:

UDel, UIC and LUC. These are strong Institutions and have the depth to support their Basketball programs. These three are a clear cut above all the other entrants. Although I see no possible way it could be done swapping Duquesne, La Salle and St. Bony for those three would be a step up. IUC needs to build their MBB program (they have the resources, so no excuses) and LUC should grow their department at least $4M/yr to more in line with the A10 -- they have an impressive over 10,000 full time undergrad population, big for a private school plus the Chicago market (again no excuses, they have the resources).

Note: Bradley misses the cut, as do Valpo and Drake. Belmont and Sienna as institutions do not impress. Evansville is in decline as is Detroit Mercy. The rural public schools of the MVC are facing a crisis we see in the larger Northern US of dwindling numbers of qualified and interested students. That pretty much kills them as candidates (Illinois State did point well however. I threw in South Dakota State, who has similar numbers to the other Dakota schools in terms of school rating and MBB attendance (maybe +/- a point or two); they came out a "-1" which means none of those schools has enough value to talk about.

So bottom line, the A10 school, excepting 3 privates who are dead weight (Duquesne should be better than they are with their resources), are a clear cut above everything in the MVC, and only LUC approaches the A10. Academically the A10 is much stronger than the almost universally low standards of the MVC schools (LUC and Drake the exception).

Some of the schools listed shows that they are FBS level of spending. UMass. is right there at AAC levels of spending, Better than some. Illisnois State is right there for FBS. Now, football brings money in for schools and the conferences. MVC schools with football is messing out. They need to be in an all conference that gets money from all sports including football.

(02-15-2019 08:53 PM)Stugray2 Wrote: [ -> ]Belmont and Sienna as institutions do not impress.

Siena (note, one N) is ranked #276 by Forbes, well within the range of current members and others being considered. It’s a national liberal arts college, so trying to assess its research spending when that’s not an institutional priority is probably not a good reason to eliminate it from consideration should the A-10 or a similar conference need a new member in the future. Siena also has prominent mindshare in the Albany media market, just outside the top 50 market areas, and currently a big hole in the A-10 footprint.

(02-16-2019 04:39 PM)DavidSt Wrote: [ -> ]Some of the schools listed shows that they are FBS level of spending. UMass. is right there at AAC levels of spending, Better than some. Illisnois State is right there for FBS. Now, football brings money in for schools and the conferences. MVC schools with football is messing out. They need to be in an all conference that gets money from all sports including football.

Not necessarily. ILST, for example, has always been a BB-first school. Their game with Bradley on espn2 now has 10k people. ILST can’t replicate things like the War on 74 in a FB-first league.

(02-15-2019 08:53 PM)Stugray2 Wrote: [ -> ]Here is data for A10, and MVC. I also threw in a few Candidates from the OVC (Belmont, Murray State), Horizon and Summit (WIU was for comparison of Football to set the correct data for SIU and Illinois State) plus UDel (CAA) and Sienna College (MAAC).


As you can see La Salle and St. Bonaventure are definite negatives for the A10, and their Institutional values + attendance are both negative on my point scale. Duquesne is not much help either, rate only "2".

Note: none of the MVC schools crack the top 11 of the A10, really 12 with Davidson. But Davidson is very small student body and that shrinks the size of their budget. I think the A10 would like to see Davidson grow from 1,700 to 2,500 undergrads. That would probably move them up the list as far as budget goes. They are good bang for the buck.

If the A10 could ever jettison the dead weight three schools emerge as serious candidates:

UDel, UIC and LUC. These are strong Institutions and have the depth to support their Basketball programs. These three are a clear cut above all the other entrants. Although I see no possible way it could be done swapping Duquesne, La Salle and St. Bony for those three would be a step up. IUC needs to build their MBB program (they have the resources, so no excuses) and LUC should grow their department at least $4M/yr to more in line with the A10 -- they have an impressive over 10,000 full time undergrad population, big for a private school plus the Chicago market (again no excuses, they have the resources).

Note: Bradley misses the cut, as do Valpo and Drake. Belmont and Sienna as institutions do not impress. Evansville is in decline as is Detroit Mercy. The rural public schools of the MVC are facing a crisis we see in the larger Northern US of dwindling numbers of qualified and interested students. That pretty much kills them as candidates (Illinois State did point well however. I threw in South Dakota State, who has similar numbers to the other Dakota schools in terms of school rating and MBB attendance (maybe +/- a point or two); they came out a "-1" which means none of those schools has enough value to talk about.

So bottom line, the A10 school, excepting 3 privates who are dead weight (Duquesne should be better than they are with their resources), are a clear cut above everything in the MVC, and only LUC approaches the A10. Academically the A10 is much stronger than the almost universally low standards of the MVC schools (LUC and Drake the exception).

I'm not sure about the others, but you've got Bradley's endowment about 1.2 billion dollars too high. Indiana State's average basketball attendance from the previous year was 3,945 and ISU's was 5,943.

And using SAT scores for Illinois schools isn't the best because most students will have taken the ACT.

(02-10-2019 07:28 PM)Stugray2 Wrote: [ -> ]What the numbers reveal is St. Bony doesn't belong in the A10, their budget is half Duqeusene's level (the bottom of the top 11). Evansville is equally low. St. Bony also has very low AI. As does La Salle. Evansville, Detroit Mercy and Valpo also have low AI. La Salle and St. Bony also have very low endowments as well ($88M and $60M respectively). UDM also has small endowment ($51.6M) and has been struggling as an institution due to a bad location.

These stats are important but St. Bony is an original D1 basketball school, its sole representative in upstate NY and has new basketball facilities.

They aren't going anywhere.