RE: A LEAGUE OF COACHES ...
the better mac teams have a little bit more scheduling leverage with the quad system. a road game last year against ohio or toledo would have been a quad 1 game and against akron, kent, buffalo and (marginally) BG would have been quad 2. neutral court games against all those teams other than BG would have been quad 2. meanwhile, playing mac teams at home is way less risky in terms of a loss but rarely helps at all with at large hopes or seeding. there was a time when the big programs chose to play periodic regional road games against mac type schools to boost their profile and reach out to alumni in those areas. lots of OSU fans in toledo, for example.
also, it's not just about playing P5 programs. playing more games against solid A10, AAC, Valley, MWC, WCC, CUSA, SoCon and OVC teams makes equal sense and is more likely to result in home-n-home series. A strong MAC program playing say @ Duquense, Richmond, @ Memphis, East Carolina, @ Pepperdine, Colorado St, @ Drake, Indiana St, @ Old Dominion, Marshall, @Winthrop, Belmont would have a better ranking and more chances for quality wins than a typical schedule with maybe a few teams like that, 1 or 2 money games at MSU/Syracuse, and the rest weak low major, D2 and Horizon bottom feeders. MAC averages as the 11th best conference in the nation. Most of the OCC games should be against leagues ranked 8-14 or top teams from slightly weaker leagues. MAC teams should also front load their schedule with P5 type teams as those are becoming more dependent on transfers and tend to have more talent but less stability than MAC teams. Easier to knock off those teams in the first couple weeks of the season than once they've had time to figure out some chemistry.
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