MVC targeting Valpo & Murray State to create 11 team league

[RacerJoeD]

Thanks Brocks. I appreciate it. Hopefully we will be rekindling that series in conference soon.

[MissouriValleyUnite]

Mark Adams is running a twitter poll nearing 1,000 votes. Overwhelming majority of replies favor adding both Murray/Valpo and he is running a campaign to the Valley accounts to take notice. He wants both in, badly, and is trying to connect the MVC office with public opinion backed with hard proof.

[BirdsEyeView]

Mark Adams is running a twitter poll nearing 1,000 votes. Overwhelming majority of replies favor adding both Murray/Valpo and he is running a campaign to the Valley accounts to take notice. He wants both in, badly, and is trying to connect the MVC office with public opinion backed with hard proof.

Love it

[RacerJoeD]

Pretty impressive from both the Valpo and Murray State fan bases, and for their supporters throughout the Valley who want this conference to be the absolute top flight conference for "Mid Major" basketball in the country.

tl;dr
When Mark Gottfried came to Murray from UCLA back in the mid 90's, we were already established as a top flight mid major program. We were in the dance a lot, but hadn't made that step up. He went through and changed some little things that we did, and had done for years. Someone asked him why he was changing little things. Why not push for something really big (at that time a practice facility). He said that the big things come after you take care of the little things, and that the little things like how we looked, how we recruited, how we prepared day to day were the building blocks. He said that if you look at those little things and thought about them in the same way a big program does, then you would project a big time program. He said Think Big, and you'll be Big. Since that time, we have built a new arena (in 1998, and sold naming rights for over $3 Million, the first school in the OVC to do so), we built a top of the line practice facility (the first program in the OVC to do so), we enhanced fan experience, and now we are looking at moving up in conference stature. That isn't a stopping point for us, because our focus is on improving every little thing. Because we aren't a small school. We are a Big Time College Basketball Program, that happens to be in a small town.

[unipanther99]

I'm definitely good with Murray State and Valpo, and okay with Milwaukee, provided they change their mascot.

[PantherU]

I'm definitely good with Murray State and Valpo, and okay with Milwaukee, provided they change their mascot.

My website is PantherU.com, but if I could go back to the mid-60's and influence the student vote, it'd be ClippersU.

For the first 10 years after we became UWM, their athletic program was called the Cardinals, and used On Wisconsin and Varsity as school songs in addition to Madison's cardinal and white as school colors. The students wanted their own brand, so after settling on Black and Gold (love it) they had a vote for the new school mascot.

The leading vote-getters were Panthers and Clippers. No joke, the panther was put up because they wanted an animal that would "totally destroy" a badger in a fight. The Clippers were considered because we're a coastal school (just four blocks from Lake Michigan) and the Milwaukee Clipper was the passenger ferry that took people across Lake Michigan and had moved manufacturing materials from Milwaukee to Muskegon during World War II.

Keep in mind that the team that is now the LA Clippers didn't become the Clippers until their 1978 move from Buffalo to San Diego. We would have been the Clippers for nearly 15 years before the pro basketball team.

[mvfcfan]

I'm definitely good with Murray State and Valpo, and okay with Milwaukee, provided they change their mascot.

We should add UWM on the condition that they change their name to Wisconsin State University.

But in reality I definitely want us to add both Murray St and Valpo. I am also very hopeful that we will add Milwaukee. I think all 3 of those schools would be solid adds to the Valley. All three of them have the potential to be really good in the near future and contend for conference championships.

EDIT: Adding Murray St, Valpo, and UWM would give us 12 teams for football (MVFC), 12 for basketball, and 10 for baseball which are all really favorable numbers for scheduling.

[PantherU]

I will say this: I believe the MVC would be stupid to not invite both Murray State and Valparaiso. If the MVC's goal is to solidify its status as the best mid-major conference in the country (I'm not counting some conferences you guys may consider mid-major, and let's not get into that), it leaves itself open to challenge from other conferences. The Horizon in its best years post-Butler is a decent challenger, and the OVC in its best years doesn't come close, but taking the best program from the OVC and one of the best programs from the HL is a way to knock both of those conferences off from mounting a challenge.

Only invite one, and it becomes murky.

What if the MVC only takes Murray State? The Horizon League has a slew of programs on the upswing, with only one (Cleveland State) that looks headed for an extended period of disarray. Two or three years with 4-5 strong Horizon League teams could challenge a Missouri Valley that may not come close to approaching the strength it had pre-2012.

What if the MVC only takes Valparaiso? The Horizon League likely only needs a couple phone calls to pull in Murray State. Maybe Belmont considers a Horizon League invitation more strongly if Murray State is going along - the distance is similar, but travel to HL schools isn't as expensive when most of them are close by inexpensive commercial airports.

That's obviously a long shot to get Belmont, but Murray State desperately wants out of the OVC and there's someone who would be willing to be a travel partner for the Racers in moving to the HL. Say the MVC notifies Murray State, Milwaukee and Omaha they're going with Valparaiso. The HL is very good at attracting new members (Valpo, Oakland and NKU have all been great adds) so it's not a stretch to think they could replace Valpo with Murray State, a decent travel partner and Robert Morris to go to 12 teams. Say they grab Lipscomb in Nashville - gives Murray State a travel partner, and Lipscomb's travel budget may actually go down in the Horizon League. A Horizon League replacing Valpo with Murray State, Lipscomb and Robert Morris could be a challenger in some years. Maybe Eastern Michigan finally goes through with cutting its football program, instead putting immense resources toward college basketball. They have a decent enough arena, that solidifies Detroit as the center of the conference and all of a sudden Motor City Madness takes off just like Arch Madness did. A 12-team Horizon League could toss away the round robin in favor of a 16-or-18-game schedule that protects the top teams from playing two conference games against the projected bottom teams in the conference.

Hell, if the MVC waits long enough between notifying the other 3 that it's going with Valpo, doesn't the Horizon League go to Murray State and Belmont, offer up a possible multi-bid league, then go back to Valparaiso before the announcement and show them not only could they be making a lateral move, they might be leaving for a worse conference.

There's certainly a long shot to many of these scenarios - definitely anything with Belmont, which looks like they may be content in their little bus league they can grab by the gonads. But the point I'm trying to make to you guys is that the MVC no longer has the benefit of being 100% the big dog in the mid-major yard, so you don't have the luxury of waiting.

Having been a part of an odd-number conference a couple different times, I can tell you that scheduling for 9 was an absolute nightmare so 11 could be an abject disaster. But going to 11 might be preferable to going to 10 and leaving the conference wide open to challenge from the Horizon League, the smaller-but-more-solid Summit League, or another conference.

TL;DR - if the MVC's long-term plans include both Valpo and Murray State, take them both right now, and avoid the challenge from other Midwestern conferences that are positioned to give the MVC headaches.

Notice that I didn't bring up adding my program, Milwaukee, in there. You guys know where I stand there, I just didn't want the message to get drowned out by the "he's just a Milwaukee guy" response. Even though I do feel the MVC's best move is a 12-team conference with Murray State, Valparaiso and Milwaukee, I did want to put forward the unbiased belief that the MVC should take Murray State and Valparaiso together if they so wish. Crusaders and Racers fans are good people who don't need to be living under the veil of uncertainty. MVC fans deserve closure on this as well.

[BCPanther]

The Valley played with 11 for two years when Evansville came in and Tulsa was on its way out. Made scheduling awful for WBB and Volleyball.

SMS didn't have a travel partner and they ended up playing a bunch of Monday night and mid-week women's games. Wasn't fair to them at all but it did give them a chance to showcase Jackie Stiles. Missouri State would be the odd one out again.

My vote is adding 3 (Valpo, Murray, Milwaukee). Travel partners work out pretty well.

UNI/Milwaukee-Panther Weekend-4 hours
Loyola/Valpo- 1 hour
Bradley/IlSu-90 minutes
Murray/SIU-90 minutes
UE/InSU-2 hours
Drake/MSU-5 hours- Mizzou St is an outlier and they're also 5 hours from SIU. Keeping SIU and Murray together makes more sense.

[IllinoisState]

The Valley played with 11 for two years when Evansville came in and Tulsa was on its way out. Made scheduling awful for WBB and Volleyball.

SMS didn't have a travel partner and they ended up playing a bunch of Monday night and mid-week women's games. Wasn't fair to them at all but it did give them a chance to showcase Jackie Stiles. Missouri State would be the odd one out again.

My vote is adding 3 (Valpo, Murray, Milwaukee). Travel partners work out pretty well.

UNI/Milwaukee-Panther Weekend-4 hours
Loyola/Valpo- 1 hour
Bradley/IlSu-90 minutes
Murray/SIU-90 minutes
UE/InSU-2 hours
Drake/MSU-5 hours- Mizzou St is an outlier and they're also 5 hours from SIU. Keeping SIU and Murray together makes more sense.

ISU to Bradley is less than 45 minutes.