MVC (Illinois Teams) Scheduling Idea

[BirdmanBB]

So as you can imagine because of our weak schedule, it is a topic beaten to death on our fan forum. I recently thought of an idea that might be able to help ISU, BU and SIU.

In the past I had a conversation with our AD about ISU possibly using the Sears Centre as a neutral site in an attempt to play BCS or High Major opponents. The Sears Centre is in Hoffman Estates, IL which is located in a Chicago Suburb (about 30-40min. outside depending on traffic). This is the current site of the Chicago Invitational which Bradley recently participated in this year. It holds 10,000 fans for basketball and doesn't have any allegiances outside of Chicago Express (hockey) and concerts and such. Illinois is another team that regularly play a neutral game at the United Center in Chicago. The logic being that you have 1 game a year that you are able to play in front of your alumni in the Chicagoland area. The other team gets exposure in Chicago.

ISU is definitely not able to land a neutral site like the United Center because we don't have as strong as a fan base (I feel like we have neglected our alumi in Chicago). This is somewhat in line with the response I recieved from our AD. Basically, we would need to be able to sell the tickets. The kicker is that a majority of our alumni are located in the Chicagoland area.

You probably get where I am going with this by now.....

Seeing that dilemma I realized that sometimes teams like Kansas will play a neutral site double headers and such. Why not a one day triple header involving ISU, BU and SIU around xmas every year? Tickets can be sold as single and session and I think many valley fans would be more prone to purchase a session ticket considering who's playing. We would all get a good neutral court game against a solid BCS or High Major opponent, play in front of Alumni once a year. The opponents get an opportunity to increase their exposure in the Chicagoland area. We might not be able to get national TV for this type of event, but I could imagine it would be something that Comcast Chicago would pick up for a day which increases exposure as well.

There are likely some things involved that I am overlooking, but I don't see the harm in trying to leverage each other to pull off an event like this. All it takes is the 3 AD's to get together with Elgin likely as a mediator to try and see if there is any interest out there for and event like this.

[Aargh]

I think it "sounds" like a great idea. Somehow I'm skeptical of getting 3 coaches to agree to the same thing. It would take a master politician and diplomat to coordinate it, set it up, and sell it to the schools, the media, and in Chicago.

If a promoter could be found who could sell it and schedule the opponents, it would be awesome.

[Ace Dad]

Great idea. The trick is to get 3 "big name" schools who will "play along" that have a traveling fan base. Our MVC schools may be at a slight basketball disadvantage, but that is why they play the game.

Imagine, Illinois, Indiana, and one other school (???????) as the opponents.