Griz til I die said:I believe it was John Calipari in an interview with Tom Izzo, Mark Few and Andy Katz that he said we need to take care of the mid-major schools and make sure that we take care of them and getting them the pay games they need to support their programs. So all 3 of those schools were in favor of pay games for the bettering of college basketball as a whole.GrizBall said:This is good info. I have been reading a lot of articles that say based on how the contracts are written, in this case Georgia may be able to greatly reduce the payout or terminate or postpone the game based on things out of their control such as COVID and the possibility that fans wouldn’t be allowed to attend the game.
Apparently the new rate for games like this is $15-20k which wouldn’t even cover the trip to Georgia.
Regional games seem to be what people are looking at. UM could have games with WSU (if PAC-12 plays before 1/1), Seattle, University of Portland and someone like Gonzaga, although the Zags are in a much higher financial bracket and probably don’t need to pay as much attention to costs.
We can be hopeful but I am skeptical for a few reasons:
1. Athletic departments are furloughing, laying-off, instituting pay-cuts and in some cases cutting sports. The optics of UK (for example) paying a school $80k when Eastern Kentucky could do a day trip for $15k isn’t good.
2. The NCAA cut the maximum amount of games from 31 to 27 which means less available games for mid-majors particularly when you add in all the non-conference tournaments/showcases and league vs. league challenges already scheduled.
3. With fewer non-con games, each non-con game becomes more important for Selection Sunday. A P-5 can’t waste games playing random teams from random leagues when trying to built strength of schedule or other analytics that the Committee looks at.
4. Testing Protocols - Power 5 schools can afford to test their players everyday. It’s unlikely most non-P5 schools can do that. If I am a P-5 school I am only going to play schools that have comparable testing protocols.
I think UM can be in a good position if they can institute a good testing program. I think they will be good enough where they won’t kill a team’s strength of schedule but not quite good enough to where P-5 schools are ducking them. UM would be an attractive game for P-5 schools.