I wish there was a way to form a nation-wide protest to try and effect the TV ratings of March Madness. Only way you'll ever get their attention is to hurt their revenue.
But that's probably just tilting at windmills.
I'm not ready to give up on the NCAAT yet. What you're suggesting is what Tech has been doing. Tech hasn't even tried to play the selection committee's game by putting together a schedule to give us a chance at an at-large bid. I'd like to see several more Cartel opponents on our OOC slate. Only 2 won't get it done. We need to ditch the Miles Colleges of the world and schedule more Top 50/100 opponents. So what if we lose them? We can't win them to build a resume if we don't schedule them, and nobody cares about wins against these no-name schools we keep scheduling. It would also be better for us financially.
Good point. Next year's schedule should be littered with cartel teams. Its a lot easier to schedule them after a 17-win season versus after a 23-win season. Now is the time to lock up as many of those games for as long as you can. Or continue in obscurity against pretty good teams no one cares about.
Minimum guarantee games we should be paying is 3...
I'm ok with playing as many as 5
''Don't be a bad dagh..."
Agreed. We go one route or the other.
Play as many as 5 guarantee games, all against potential Top 75 competition to hopefully pull out a couple of quad 1 wins. Or go the other route and don't play any at all. Playing just 2, even if you beat one of them, gets you almost nowhere.
I completely agree with trying to put together as tough as an OOC schedule as possible. If possible, I think the conference should some how have a requirement on level of OOC schedules. Schools with a 200 or 300+ OOC SOS should be punished (including us with our annual SWAC/MEAC tour). I know this will never happen, but if we want to be a multi-bid league again this may be one of the only ways possible. Hell the conference still let Birmingham host after dropping football and never punished them. So I know this is a pipe dream.
FWIW, it looks like Kermit is ditching MTSU for Ole Miss b/c he did exactly what should be necessary to get an at-large bid and was still screwed by the committee.
The weaker C-USA programs don't need tough OOC schedules. They need the opposite. The weaker C-USA teams ought to be limited to only 1 Cartel opponent and be required to try to buy as many wins as possible.
Basically the top C-USA teams that think they can compete for an NCAA at-large bid, NIT, or conference championship need to play as many tough OOC games as possible. Everyone else needs to try to buy as many wins as possible. That's how you rig the RPI and play the selection committee's game.
Soooo...how does the conference decide which are the "weaker" teams. Rank the previous year? Because if so, after a 10th place finish, Tech would have to schedule a bunch of pansies in 18-19 by this model. How many fans here would sign up for that next year?
How would this be different from what we normally do?
I'd go by RPI, since that's the metric we're trying to game. If you don't meet a certain cutoff (3 year rolling average), you have to schedule pansies. If Tech doesn't want to have to do that, they can start winning games.
Plus, have we already forgotten the absolutely offensive schedule from a few years ago? Whoever is doing this scheduling sure doesn't care about what the fans want.