Sun Belt Scheduling Policy

[Rush the Court]

New Sun Belt scheduling policy:

sports.espn.go.com/ncb/news/story?id=5724780

[riceownz2]

Those are lofty goals imo (the attendance factor). But its not a bad idea just not everyone can do this lol.

[Jazzfan]

The MVC and A-10 already have similar scheduling policies.

[Big D]

Just another conference making a statement that they want to move up in the world while the HL continues to tell it's members to fake it by playing D2 games.

[CincyDrummer]

Oct 25, 2010 20:01:18 GMT -5 Big D said:

Just another conference making a statement that they want to move up in the world while the HL continues to tell it's members to fake it by playing D2 games.

+1

[keithfromxenia]

i am not sure if lecrone will be at the hl luncheon in early nov. but if he is someone needs to challenge him on this very point. how many leagues do we have to see doing this while we have our pathetic policy of encouraging non div i competition?

[Sixth Man]

LeCrone will just talk around the question without answering it. He's like a bad politician.

[Black PantherU]

Well said, Big D.

Our fans bellyached to Jeter and Co. for the scheduling of D-II regular season games every year until last year, when they finally had enough and many fans stayed home during D-II regular season games against Hillsdale and Concordia-St. Paul; we only had roughly 2,000 at each game.

Personally, I'd like to see games against D-II's removed, as well as games against teams in the bottom 100 of the RPI. I mean, while Toledo is in the MAC, a mid-major conference, they are awful in the RPI the last couple years. UIC is playing a home-and-home with them. Loyola has a home-and-home with UT-Pan American. Mind you, these are home-and-homes in this season alone. Green Bay did the same thing against Houston Baptist recently.

Cut the bullshit games, they don't help the conference and don't help the teams. Want to play D-II schools? Schedule them in exhibition.

A lot of our fans love the new schedule because it doesn't have D-II games and our only low-major opponents are in the Portland tournament (excluding Portland of course) and a South Dakota State game which is the final installment of an AWFUL 2-for-2 signed by a former associate AD.

Well, I suppose the two YSU games are low-major. Let's improve the schedule by eliminating D-II games, limiting D-I opponents to the top 250 (with exceptions of course which we can debate), and removing the two low-major conference games from our schedule.

[Raider Country]

The HL isn't going to do anything proactive like this. Let's face it, all LeCrone gives a shit about is Butler. When they end up leaving the conference is a few years when a better opportunity comes up, LeCrone is going to have a heart attack. If he wants to keep Butler around and in the process make the HL a better conference he needs take the following steps:

-no more D2 games
-no more than 1 buy games on the road with BCS schools
-get a better TV contract that also includes some OOC guaranteed games. It is much easier to approach an A-10, MVC, or CAA school for a home/home series when you can guarantee them they will be on TV.
-try to get a HL/CAA, HL/MVC, HL/A-10, etc showdown for TV
The HL doesn't do shit for exposure for our teams. Take a look at the number of games each team plays on TV this year. Most of them were arranged by our own programs through scheduling BCS games or preseason tournament games, not the HL.

[Wolf]

The MVC's Policy:

The MVC instituted a policy before the 2001-02 season that essentially forced its members to schedule better. It said a school would forfeit its share of the NCAA Tournament pool (about $50,000 each) if it did not meet one of three criteria: a team Ratings Percentage Index of 149 or lower in the current year, an RPI of opponents for the current year of 149 or lower, or an RPI of opponents for the latest three years of 149 of lower.

Two schools did not make it in 2001-02 and in 2002-03, but every one has reached it during the past four years, and the worst RPI this season was Indiana State's 139.

``Our teams were not scheduling strong enough,'' Elgin said. ``We established what we called a `strength-of-scheduling threshold' if you wanted your share of this segregated chunk of money from the NCAA. This was groundbreaking policy at the time. Several other leagues have mimicked us.

``What it has done for us is to be strong from top to bottom. You are only as strong as your weakest link.''

The idea for member schools was to schedule well and schedule smart.

"We want our teams to have a balanced and competitive schedule, with at least 50 percent of your games at home,'' Elgin said. "The leagues that send their teams on the road for guarantees (large amounts of money against established powers) are not doing themselves any long-term favors.''

wrightstate.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1139

[Wolf]

A-10 scheduling policy:

The Atlantic 10 Conference voted to adopt new criteria for scheduling men's basketball opponents beginning next year (2007/08), a league official said.

The new policy will divide the conference's 14 teams into "tiers," with each team playing 16 conference games, Assistant Commissioner Ray Cella said. The changes will affect the three remaining games, which will be played against teams in the same tier.

Teams in the top tier will also be forbidden from playing out-of-conference games against teams with Rating Percentage Index of worse than 200.

The RPI, a computer team-ranking formula that heavily factors strength of schedule, has become increasingly important in recent years, Cella said.

"We've looked at data and we've seen the NCAA selection committee thought process, so we've come up with a policy that we think will help us enhance the chances of getting of at-large bids," Cella said. "That's what it all comes down to."

GW played seven of 12 out-of-conference games against teams with worse than a 200 RPI last season.

Cella said the term tier was not accurate, but the conference could not think of a more appropriate word.

A-10 teams will also not be permitted to participate in games in which they are paid to play. "Buy games" are typical in college basketball when a large opponent pays a smaller team to play a game.

Cella would not comment on penalties for breaking these rules. Kvancz said he did not know what the penalty would be. If the penalty is not severe, he said he would consider breaking it and suffering the consequences.

GW and Xavier are upper-tier teams, Kvancz said, but he did not know where other teams were slotted. Cella would not comment on which teams were in what tier. Coaches, athletic directors and school presidents voted the rankings, Cella said.

Hobbs told The Hatchet during a phone interview Wednesday that he believes he was the only coach to abstain during the January vote.

"I don't know how coaches can vote how good teams are going to be in January - I know I can't do it," Hobbs said. He also said he thinks that the process has "some very serious flaws" that will "hurt the league in the long run."

Hobbs said he does not believe GW deserves to be ranked in the top tier considering it lost four of its five starters from the previous year. He said Rhode Island was not in the top tier, despite bringing all of its starters back.

"This vote becomes very, very important because scheduling is becoming more important than recruiting in college basketball," Hobbs said. "It ought to be taken more seriously."

The new policy may also skew season records, making lower-tier teams' records better because they play sub-par teams twice.

The out-of-conference policy will be based on last year's RPI, Cella said, citing the inability to know during the scheduling period how good a potential opponent will be in the upcoming season. The league will allow schools to honor existing contracts with teams that have an RPI above 200.

In the past, GW has been chided for scheduling easy out-of-conference games, sometimes at the expense of its RPI.

The changes will likely increase teams' RPI, but it may have a number of "unintended consequences" that will hurt the league, Kvancz said. For instance, the policy will prevent teams from playing natural rivals if the opponent is not good that particular year.

"Who is the league to dictate who the hell we play?" Kvancz said.

He added that he thought he was the "lone ranger" against the policy because GW's recent success and small gym make it difficult to schedule home-and-home games against good teams.

"It becomes an issue of arenas versus gyms," Kvancz said. "(Playing only teams with an RPI of) 200 is doable, but the problem in my opinion is we may have bitten off more than we can chew."

wrightstate.proboards.com/index.cgi?board=general&action=display&thread=1139

[Raider Alumni]

I don't expect any changes from the HL anytime soon. LeCrone is not a forward thinker by any stretch of the imagination.