TheAsianSensation wrote:The selling point is increased relevancy and increased exposure.
Remember, this league has graduated two programs to better pastures in the Big Priest and AAC. If your endgame is being a power program, the MVC is a stepping stone.
How much more consolidation do you actually see being done? Just thinking about that and how it relates to the Big Dance, there will be 0 extra bids for any of the mid-major conferences -- I don't consider the AAC or A10 mid-majors with the size of their basketball budgets.
There are 68 total openings when you have your 64 seeds and the 4 extra "first four" game opponents. There are 32 Division 1 hoops conferences so 68 participants minus 32 automatic qualifiers gives you 36 "at large" (might as well drop the at moniker) bids. Between the (what I consider) 8 (FBS P5, BE, AAC and A10) high major conferences, you have 100 total teams. This year, those conferences received 43 total bids. Subtract the 8 automatic qualifiers and that means 35 of the 36 available bids went to power conference schools. There was literally 1 bid up for grabs by mid-major conferences and it went to Saint Mary's, who was ranked the entire year going 28-4 and suffered 3 of those 4 losses to Gonzaga.
If you think there is going to be even more consolidation, there is absolutely no chance mid-major schools ever sniff an at-large again as the upper crust will have made sure that doesn't happen through their sheer force in numbers. Only possible scenario I could see stealing away a bid is a 30-1 season where you lose in your conference tournament final, had a high RPI/BPI/SOS and whatever other hoop the selection committee mandated you jump through for that particular year. That's pretty unrealistic scenario as a team rolling like that is probably going to squash their conference foes in the final, but whatever.
I'd say even without that we're already at that point. The 2017 tournament had 14 at-large teams with 10 or more losses and 31 at-large teams with 7 or more losses. The consolidation over the last decade has insulated power programs from having to schedule difficult OoC games and when they do, it's neutral court nonsense for the most part. IMO, college hoops has been broken out of the media contract realignment cash grab. I'm with Mark Adams in that there needs to be reform and some sort of scheduling mandate put forth by the NCAA to balance it out. Will that ever happen. Highly doubtful.