How will UMass change the MAC scene?

[daspollak]

Why do we have divisions for basketball? The ACC has it right for that sport. Designate rivalry games allow them a home and away, and flip-flop the schedule every year.

[Flipper]

Exactly..drop the divisions and get rid of those asinine on campus tournament games that no one goes to. Just take the top 8 to the gund and play three rounds

[h2oville rocket]

Exactly..drop the divisions and get rid of those asinine on campus tournament games that no one goes to. Just take the top 8 to the gund and play three rounds

Never happen. If those top 8 are NIU, Miami, Eastern, etc some year and UT, Akron and Kent don't make the cut its down the tubes $wise. I believe that every conference in the nation has every team involved in the conference tournament.

[BGFalconfromCincy]

I believe that every conference in the nation has every team involved in the conference tournament.

Trust me, not every conference has every team involved in their conference tournament. I don't know why, but I love following the conference tournaments every March, every day during that time I'm on espn.com checking the action, and can tell there are some conferences that don't involve everyone, I know for sure off hand that the Summit League doesn't have all their teams in there tournaments. I know there are more, would just have to look back at that page to find the rest

[BGFalconfromCincy]

Why do we have divisions for basketball? The ACC has it right for that sport. Designate rivalry games allow them a home and away, and flip-flop the schedule every year.

Thats what I said the day it was announced, keep divisions for football and thats it

[h2oville rocket]

I believe that every conference in the nation has every team involved in the conference tournament.

Trust me, not every conference has every team involved in their conference tournament. I don't know why, but I love following the conference tournaments every March, every day during that time I'm on espn.com checking the action, and can tell there are some conferences that don't involve everyone, I know for sure off hand that the Summit League doesn't have all their teams in there tournaments. I know there are more, would just have to look back at that page to find the rest

Could be-I used to be religous about NCAA basketball years ago but I don't so much anymore.

[AyZiggy97]

While I support letting all the teams into the tournament, the format has been curious. If teams play 10 of their 16 games within the division, then the tournament should be formatted by division.

Not all conferences let all members into the tournament, but the ones with exclusions seem to base it on a workable format. For instance, the A10 drops the last two teams and has the same format as the MAC.

[daspollak]

The SEC also does it by division and they seem to be happy, but the rivalries are maintained in all sports. What drives me crazy is our biggest rival (sl)UT we play once a year in basketball. They are the closest school to us, but because of divisions they are on our home court every other year.

[Sub-Zero]

I am really torn with the Temple and UMass agreements. My heart says no way, let them pound sand if they dont see enough in the MAC to bring their only value prop to the equation (BBall). Its pretty clear the plan is to get better (Temple) or go higher (UMass) in hopes of obtaining a Big East invite over time. My head says to use them like they are using us in terms of the east coast market exposure. I do think the Philadelphia market (5th largest) has helped the MAC with TV and revenue negotiations. But at the end of the day, if the MAC beats our OOC competition and wins the bowl games we have in place today, we can write our own ticket without these two carpet baggers.

[Falcon137]

Thought I would pass this little tidbit along....

Dick Weiss-
several temple ftall commits have tweeted they were told by new staff they could be playing in big east next year. news to us, big east of.

http://twitter.com/#!/NYDNDickWeiss