Muncie Star on the divergent trends for basketball and football in MAC

I've blogged on this quite a bit, but Doug Zaleski writes about how the MAC's commitment to upgrading football has impacted basketball, with some excellent quotes from Keith Dambrot at Akron.

It is a companion to an even better piece about where the talent has gone--where are the marquee players we used to see?

Note also the comments of the Conference Tool, Rick Boyages, who is responsible for basketball.

Boyages was an assistant basketball coach at Ohio State, one of the premier football powers in the nation. He said the Buckeyes' profile in football was good for all sports at the school.

If he can't understand why Ohio State can sustain the investment in all its programs in order to benefit from that increased football profile and MAC schools can't, then he is just not aware of who he is working for.

Some basic thoughts.

• I think the question of whether MAC schools can compete at high levels in football and basketball is an open question that is about to be recession-tested.
• The MAC was once a thinking man's basketball conference, but now lags behind the Horizon conference.
• Even the investment in football has generated (charitably) mixed results, with eight straight bowl losses.

To add another brick onto the wall, from the perspective of Bowling Green, there are rumors about our hockey program as well. I don't blog hockey because I only have the ability to really follow two sports, but the hockey team is in last place, postponed arena renovations, and there is talk of ending the hockey program.

Those are probably just rumors. But, the point is that it is no longer unthinkable, and that means something. While Ball State and CMU and UT and others are struggling to compete in basketball AND football, BG and WMU are struggling to compete in football, basketball AND hockey.

As the big schools spend more and more, I think the MAC is going to be faced with uncomfortable decisions like these. Right now, they have chosen low-grade I-A football. The consequences are evident. There would have been consequences to doing it the other way, too. But, we made a choice, and it did have an impact. And we may not be able to have it all...we may really have to choose.