What do you folks think of this?
The MAC regular season champ should get to play the first game on their home court. Give the regular season champ some reward, beyond just playing the #8 seed.
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Conference just got handed a nice chunk of change from Sac St. Any conversation outside of making the conference more competitive nationally is a waste of time
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Having to travel from Oxford to play in Cleveland a day later does not sound appealing. Just bring back the semifinal byes for the top two seeds and be done with it.
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I don’t think Miami can have that excuse. I know they practiced at Cleveland state the day before thanks to Rob summers
I’m fine with that too. Needs to be some reward for winning regular season.
I’m not sure if a change is needed (I liked the old 4 byes and campus games for the rest format) but I honestly don’t care about any bellyaching from the school that gets to play the tournament 40 minutes from campus every year.
The location is probably where it needs to be and wouldn’t change it from Cleveland but it certainly slants things to the NE Ohio schools.
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This is the perfect setup: All 12 teams in, top 4 get byes. First round on campus sites. Still leaves 3 games in three days in Cleveland. If the No. 1 seed needs more, then re-seed after the first round games. I also think the MAC should have a payout of some sort for a team winning the MAC Regular season title. Perhaps $50K to its NIL Fund.
I used to think the double bye was stupid, and I probably still would had Miami not run the table in the MAC during the regular season. However, having all 8 teams needing to win 3 games in 3 days does seem to diminish the regular season.
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Especially in a season like this past one where there wasn’t much difference between the 4th and 8th place teams. Heck 8-seed UMass was 2-0 in road games vs the ACC.