PantherU wrote:What does matter, however, is the recruiting market. Adding Loyola did not bring a bunch of TV viewers to help negotiate the next TV contract. Loyola did bring MVC teams the opportunity to tell Chicago-based recruits that their families will be able to see them play at least once a year without leaving town.
Is this based on anything real, or just a guess? I'd be interested in knowing if there was any data that actually backed this up.
I'm not convinced 247Sport's class rankings are a great way to measure such a thing, but if you average MVC team class rankings on their site from 2014-17 and compare those to 2010-13, the average MVC recruit ranking has fallen by .72 since adding "the Chicago recruiting market" to the league. The clear statistical anomaly there is that the average recruit ranking for Loyola itself rose 4.78. At least from the data on 247, the MVC did not benefit in recruiting from adding Chicago, but Loyola did benefit from joining the Valley -- although Drake's recruiting is clearly better as well.
(And noting that I didn't include Wichita for obvious reasons.)
Same would go if you look at 247Sport's class rankings instead of average player ranking: Loyola and Drake have gained, and no one else. Even with those two, the average class ranking fell between 3.83 and 4.84 spots.
If there's another set of data points that indicates a benefit to market for recruiting, I'd be interested in seeing it, but this seems to be one of those "well logically it should be ..." or "a coach said ..." points that can't be backed up by anything quantifiable.