MAC Makes Major Men's Hoops Changes

Graham Couch of the Kalamazoo Gazette is one of the top basketball writers following the MAC.  Over the past few years, he has written more than once about the MAC's slide in basketball, which began with the conference considered the equal of the Missouri Valley Conference and ended with the MAC being a one-big, generally one and down conference with half filled gyms.  The four worst teams in the MAC had RPIs under 300, meaning they were among the bottom 10% of all teams in D1.

He notes that the MAC's two best teams--Akron and Kent--play in facilities he compares to high school facilities, and that "Similarly, the West Division has been set back by a series of unnecessary coaching changes by self-serving, greedy and simple-minded administrators."  (Not sure, exactly, what that refers to--Ramsey?  Patten?  Thompson? Joplin?)

He has written about how that is based on investment, buying home games, upgrading facilities and paying coaches.  Now, the MAC is responding to what is obvious to anyone who attends the game--the MAC is slipping even further into obscurity.

Note that the Commissioner, Jon Steinbrecher, came to the MAC from the OVC with a basketball rep.  And, there haven't been any results yet.

What follows below is from Couch's article, which I commend to you in its entirety.

Essentially, the MAC is putting accountability behind the desire to improve basketball. In Couch's words, "Consequences for inadequacy."  The basic idea is that the MAC gets money from the NCAA tourney, over $1.6M per year, which is currently divided in equal shares. Now, there will be a minimum payment, but teams will be able to improve their payment by doing certain things.

For example, to get a full share, teams will have to play 15 home games on a rolling two-year average.  Couch calls this "ground breaking" and he is right.  You want a higher RPI, win games.  You want to win games, play at home.  BG played 14 regular season home games the last three years, so adding one will be do-able, especially as the Frick Endowment kicks in.



Here is what Couch wrote...

This is the beginning of forcing the hand of those unwilling to properly bankroll the second-most visible college sport in this country. This means buying in at least a game or two every season — as WMU did with Eastern Illinois last December at a cost of $45,000.

Other performance measures will include:

“A portion will be distributed straight out and a portion will distributed through an incentive plan, which you pick up units based on things you do throughout the year,” Steinbrecher said Friday. “So if you win the tournament, you win the regular season, you pick up more units. 

“You’re in the NCAA tournament or NIT or CBI or CIT, you pick up units. Nonconference winning percentage at a certain level, you pick up more units. If your RPI is at a certain level, you pick up more units.”

I am 100% in favor of these moves.  I love football, but the MAC can make a much larger impact in basketball, and the conference's slow decline has been pretty obvious.  There is no reason for us not to compete, we just need the investment.  MAC basketball has been evenly-matched and entertaining because of it recently, but the level of competition has to go up for teams to compete.

Also, I 100% applaud the rule about home games.  I contend that it is difficult for fans to bond with their home teams when they never play at home during the November-December portion of the schedule.  That effects the fan support when the team plays conference games.  Also, the timing matters---at BG, it seems we play a lot of home games during breaks.  Perhaps that can improve if we were buying the games.

The league has a long way to go.  However, it has been done before, and I believe there are good coaches right now in the MAC.  There is no reason for things to be as bad as they are, especially at the bottom of the league.