dutchcountry7

Oh great… Another top team who will regularly be coming into WNY and not playing us. There goes the chance of scheduling the Ramblers OOC. Makes it even harder to win over local basketball fans. Really need to up the rivalry with St Bona and use that to boost interest.

That’s true for power conferences. That’s not true for internet streaming conferences. It’s about bringing in the fan base of the teams. MTSU doesn’t even have Murfreesboro locked down. Which is why streaming is how their fans from all over watch their team play. Do we care about playing a football game in Tennessee and Kentucky once every six years and in basketball once every other year? How much does that boost the brand? Are we looking to recruit players and students from there?

Why would we want to give up bids to other teams? Why would we want to give up money to other teams? We already are able to schedule WKU and MTSU. If we call them up for OOC games we will get them.

At Kansas you have to take oversized risks. If Kansas loses to Texas; no one will remember the game. If Kansas beats Texas? Well here we are and people will be talking about it for some time. You can bet it will help with recruiting in Texas.

Not going to happen. They don't care about it. The event hasn't even made the venue's schedule... Events - List View | KeyBank Center - keybankcenter.com

CUSA is going to give MTSU more money because they have the exit fees and entrance fees being paid. Sounds like MTSU wants some financial assistance from the MAC.

And they will pay the exit fee to CUSA and the CUSA will survive in the interim. I don't see that as a risk. I am not sure if I make the move to the MAC if I am MTSU or WKY. Saving on travel is the real benefit. But CUSA may provide more revenue, I am not sure.

Sam Houston State won the FCS championship last year. They are a legit program. Currently Undefeated and ranked #1 in FCS. 2020 Sam Houston State Bearkats football team - Wikipedia Jacksonville State just beat Florida State this year. They are having a down year this year but were in the 2015 FCS National Championship game. They are a solid fan following--averaged 17,000 fans in 2019 and 2020. For comparison, we averaged 18,000 in attendance in 2020 and 16,000 in 2019. New Mexico State gives UTEP a local school which is good for travel for the non-football sports. Travel out in one trip and play each of them in a conference game all while adding another FBS football school. NMSU is a good basketball program too.

Decided to take a look to see how efficient it would be. Visited the NFTA Metro website and this is what they gave for their trip planner... NFTA - Page Not Found So I did some googling and found this which is linked from the NFTA website: From University At Buffalo to Keybank Center (Arena Keybank) by Bus or Light Rail (moovitapp.com) If I want to leave at 10:40 AM from the Amherst Campus, I will get to the arena at 12:10 PM at the earliest. So, a 90 minute trip, one way. Or if going by car/bus it is a 23 minute trip. I don't think Students will travel by transit and waste three hours of their day commuting. There is a reason other schools have invested in running their own shuttles. They know that you can't depend on students taking public transit. Temple Students can take public transit from their dorms to games but the school runs shuttles for them: Temple Football Game Day Shuttles | Calendar of Events Pitt has public transit to take students to football games. Yet they still offer shuttle busses directly for students: Heinz Field Shuttle | Parking, Transportation & Services | University of Pittsburgh You can not rely on public transit if you actually want to get students to the game. That's part of the problem. There hasn't been enough care and consideration given to making sure students get involved. It must be as frictionless as possible. There needs to be efforts to make sure students get there. It isn't enough to make them aware that the event is happening. It needs to be done in a way that gets students there even if they don't really care about the sporting event. It needs to be a social event where they are simply moving with the crowd of other students and everything is effortless.

What you call “little overlap” professional sports franchises would call casual fans and would consider a significant risk to long term profits. Let’s think about this another way. If UB did become a Gonzaga, do you think the Sabres would not be impacted? Do you think Sabres viewership and attendance wouldn’t be impacted on nights that UB (Gonzaga) was playing? Do you think the people who casually watch the Sabres now on TV and occasionally go to a game every few years would increase their sports viewership and sports spending? Do you think they will watch both games when the two sports are on at the same time? Or would they watch the same amount of sports and spend the same amount of money to attend sports and just divide it up differently with some people choosing to no longer watch hockey because basketball was on? Do you think the Buffalo area corporate sponsors would increase their sports sponsorship budgets to support two major programs? Or do you think they would redirect sponsorship dollars from the Sabres to the Bulls? I can assure you, there would be a major impact. The Sabres, as all pro sports, are first and foremost in the entertainment business. They aren’t a hockey business. They are an entertainment business. Their entertainment is sports. Their sport of choice is Ice Hockey. It’s the reason pro sports owners own so many different teams in various sports. They recognize this fact. They don’t was to risk even a 1% of that. They don’t want to do anything to help their competition. And they know that college basket is their competition.

Revenue is number one on both schools’ list of priorities. They are by far the best program we play at home basically every year we get them at Alumni. The game can already be a big rivalry without the need to give up revenue to a pro sports team. It would be nice if it were a big event but without a sponsor who wants to bankroll it, I don’t see how it would happen.

I don't think they will play an odd number of conference games. My guess is that each team will play everyone in the conference once. (13 games) Then there will be 7 or 5 teams that you plat a second time. Probably based on geography to cut down on travel. So probably something like this for us for one year (next year would be inverse of locations): Play at Home only (4) - Western Kentucky, Northern Illinois, Western Michigan, Bowling Green Play Away only (4) - Middle Tennessee State, Eastern Michigan, Ball State, Central Michigan Play Twice Home and Away (5 teams, 10 games) - Akron, Kent State, Ohio, Toledo, Miami This would be an 18 game schedule. I am not sure if the teams would prefer 20 or 18 moving forward. Just made the change to 20.

I don’t believe this will have any impact. If anything it helps programs like UB by getting the most elite players out of the college game. The addition of the G-League hasn’t hurt college basketball. The G-League is better basketball than NCAA basketball yet no one watches it. People don’t watch the college game because it is the best. No one believes it is the best league. And I don’t think people are going to watch a four team league that has high school kids who couldn’t make the G-League being ran by coaches fired for poor performance.

If the schools committed to making it a neutral site rivalry game and bussed students in it would be awesome. Have 7,500 fans in attendance for the neutral site games where both sides have a lot of fans at the game. That sounds good. No need to turn fans away from either school. But each school undoubtedly makes more money at a home game every other year than they would from this. I can’t see Key Bank giving financial incentives that would make it better for the two schools. Seems like the winner there would be KeyBank who gets another event to come to their facility to make money for them.

I recall Alnutt saying that the majority of tickets UB sells are to people who live around Amherst. They didn't see playing in the city as a big benefit. And they don't like the idea of giving up home court advantage. We just started a four game home/home with St Bona. I don't think there is any interest for us to go down to them and then give them a neutral court site where they have been able to sell more tickets to games in the past. Playing in front of half a house of St Bona fans at Key Brank doesn't really help us, does it?

It's not clear to me that it is the local schools holding back. I think it is actually Pegula Sports and Entertainment. Getting people interested in Big Four basketball doesn't help the Sabres. It just gives them more competition for winter sports fans. More people watching the Buffalo Bulls all winter isn't good for them. I think they are really interested in hosting the NCAA tournament so they can bring people to their arena and to Canalside to stay in their hotels and eat at their restaurants. But they are most interested in bringing in the fans from Ohio State, Murray State, Tennessee, St. Mary's or whoever is assigned to play at the Buffalo site to make money off and not too interested in cultivating a local college basketball fan base.

Would be full members so they would be basketball games too.

I think each school got 2,500 tickets to that one. They didn’t plan to open the upper level. Amazing how few fans will go downtown to games. I really don’t understand why the schools weren’t able to bus students in for the games and have a nice crowd. It would seem like the student sections are a large part of the attendance at any home game. You have to think it would be better to have people there than to have that huge venue be empty. Either the venue didn’t want people there that weren’t paying (so they wouldn’t have to clean up a few extra seats where the students would sit) or the schools put no effort into getting students there and didn’t want to invest in some busses. Either way, it seems like we have been doing the MAAC and Key Bank some favors. Though I suppose it’s better to have our road games against Canisius at Key Bank rather than going to their gym. We have an advantage at Key Bank for sure.

Key Bank Arena was required to host a regular season basketball event this year. They are a host site for the 2022 NCAA tournament and as part of the requirements to host is a dry run event during the season. The MAAC is the host of the NCAA tournament. The MAAC and KeyBank have to work out the terms for the hosting revenue and the dry run. It sounds like one side or the other had no interest in investing into a quality dry run event with top teams. Sounds like they went as low budget as they could go to meet the requirement. Would be great to bring in some notable teams from outside the area.

No. They add no value to the conference. We already have deals in place to play them. They are indies which means they are desperate to get games and prefer regional games. Them not being in the MAC helps us. We get to schedule them as local regional foes. And we can recruit against them with the sales pitch that if you play at UB you can play in a conference championship game and play in a bowl game. Both of which isn't happening at UMass or UConn. Those New England schools add no value to the MAC which has a tight geography that doesn't fit in New England.. The MAC would help them significantly. It would help their budgets, give them paths to bowl games and conference championship games and allow them to use the MAC as a stepping stone to a better conference or at worst bring stability and competitiveness to the program. There is no reason for us to bail them out. UConn didn't want to bring their basketball teams to MAC schools. That would have made the terms more interesting. UMass didn't want to join the conference. That would have made it worth it. They both believe they are above the MAC. So they can sit on an island and MAC schools can choose, or decline, to schedule them OOC as it is convenient for each individual school.

Who would you ask? This is a serious question. Who do you think they would ask? What school do you look at that you think would be a good geographic fit, has shown that they can consistently win, are willing to put more money into their athletic department, and has a fan base that will drive media revenues (which this is really all about). Demographic shifts are not on the MAC's side. And for Michigan and Ohio schools (the majority of the conference) they are really locked in with their peers.

We have been reluctant to schedule Home/Home games. The athletic department has been focused on selling games to bring in money. Playing teams on the road that will give us a paycheck. Trying to get good competitive games in tournaments which is often when we see other good mid-majors. Then filling the slate with home games with teams we buy for less than we sell our games for. This is why we always play a non-D1. They are dirt cheap. The idea has been to bring in money (which the athletic department hasn't had) and use that money to pay for the staff and to get some teams to come in to try to cultivate a local Buffalo fan base through home games. These are the home/home deals we have done since 2015 to 2020: - St Bona (every year) - Canisius (every year) - Niagara (stopped playing) - Southern Illinois (2x in 2019) - Delaware (2016/2018) - Binghamton (2014/15) The program has been VERY light on playing Home/Home deals. Most mid-majors will play between 5-6 home/home series year. Often it is about half of their non-tournament games. For instance, Cornell played 10 home/home games in 2019. 5 home and 5 away with the alternate the year before or the year following. UB plays between 2-3 a year. It's important to remember how low the program was even when we were winning and going to the big Dance. In 2015 and 2016 we were selling games to Texas-Arlington, Grand Canyon, St. Joe's, and Old Dominion through tournament deals. These are teams that should have been our peers and we should have been getting home/home deals with but they were buying us because we were desperate for the cash. Which is back to my original point on the strategy. It was a Buffalo (not NY State) focused strategy. The admin decided to invest in home games to try to cultivate the local fan base (which considering that student fees was funding the program it may have made sense to try to bring a lot of games to campus). Which was at odds with the branding that was put out at the same time. But now the program is turning the corner and there is a need to engage fans directly. Yes, there is still a cash crunch as there is a lot of debt with the football facility and other initiatives but we are in a position to be able to be transitioning away from what was done before and should be making the push to develop the downstate market. I have always thought a dual Upstate/downstate strategy should have been implemented and that in-state home/home deals would have been more beneficial. The scheduling strategy has shifted this year and focused more on scheduling home/home games with other top mid-majors to try to get good games at the expense of home games (#30 St. Bona, #112 UC-Irving, #135 North Texas, #90 Western Kentucky). Which is going to be a much more challenging schedule and will bring good games to campus. But in order to do it they are playing two non-D1 games this year (Point Park and St. John Fisher). I would much rather get rid of these non-D1 games to play a game or two around NY state every year to get in front of alums. But maybe the budget is already stretched and just can't support a trip downstate with only one buy game on the schedule so we were forced to bring in two non-D1 teams for less money than it would cost to get hotels/bus to a game a few hours away.

You don't think we can get a home/home deal with NJIT, Hofstra, Iona, Manhattan, Long Island, Columbia, Stony Brook, FDU, St. Pete's, Wagner, or St. Francis? Yes, a home/home with St. John's or Seton Hall won't happen. But we absolutely can get home/home deals that also deliver down state games. It seems like Hofstra is always playing Bonaventure. We are a better game for them. At least they could recruit Buffalo where they are actual good players.

So do a home/home with Hofstra or Iona? Like I mentioned? So you’re in agreement with what I was saying.

That’s literally what I was saying. And you start that by doing a home/home. it’s like the people who propose “Why don’t they just schedule Duke at Alumni arena? That will bring the fans out.” It is not how you start. that’s the ultimate goal of where the program would like to get someday.