I think you covered it pretty well. If we have a hard time getting interest/attendance/donations when we're playing ISU, SIU, and UNI pretty much every year (teams we have a great deal of history with), how much more difficult is that going to be playing Tennessee Tech, UT-Martin, or SEMO every year (teams we do not have much of a history with)? And now that the OVC has partnered with the Big South to create what looks like it's going to be a football-only conference, we could count regular matchups with Campbell, Gardner-Webb, and Robert Morris in there as well. Is that what would be best for the program?Western_101 wrote: ↑Thu Feb 24, 2022 3:19 amWhy it is Important to stay in the MVFC and go OVC olympic. I am tempted to start, football recruiting, perception, rivalries, fan interest, If we can get former players that have money, or anyone to buy into/build what we need.....can't do it from the OVC. However, we desperately need to save money and these athletes don't want to be on these miserable forever bus rides. OVC adding USI and Lindenwood really makes me hope a deal can be negotiated to let us in/ save for football as we covered.
For those that would say "yeah but Belmont, and Murray State just left" Yeah, they did, to kick the daylights out of the current MVC membership. This new lineup and geographic footprint I pray Western will be in.
Thoughts:
Take it away Mr. Lawson!
On the basketball side of things, I think the OVC minus Murray State and Belmont are not much worse than the Summit League in terms of quality. EIU, Morehead State, SEMO, SIUE, TN State, TN Tech, UT-Martin, plus new/future additions of UALR, Lindenwood, and Southern Indiana. The travel situation is much better, and really, the OVC and Summit League are both 1-bid leagues, so if we're trying to make it to the NCAA tournament, then it's not like one gives us a huge advantage over the other. If anything, having the OVC be a little worse than the Summit would help us get the autobid easier. In terms of who the teams are and fan interest...we don't have any rivalries in the Summit League anymore. Our biggest rivalry in basketball is EIU...which would become an annual conference matchup.
For all sports, with this new OVC, there are four teams (SIUE, Lindenwood, EIU, SEMO) that are closer than the closest Summit League team (KC) and four SL teams (SDSU, NDSU, UND, Denver) that are further away than the furthest OVC team (TN Tech). The average OVC team is 346 miles away from Macomb and the average SL team is 537 miles away.