538 article about the ridiculousness of conference tournament locations
Spoiler alert: the Big Ten is the furthest from the geographic center.
https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-ridiculousness-of-conference-t…
But who knows what the 12 days off will do. Livers will have time to heal his ankle, but will the team get stale? Will they retain their shooting stroke? It's hard to change a schedule this drastically. All-in-all, NYC was a better location for Michigan fan turnout than Indy.
Yeah, I'm willing to keep the BTT on the East Coast as long as Michigan wins hahaha
Because we fuckin own that city (and DC too).
There is no way Rutgers has 7 whole fans in NYC!
....hey, it is not that far from jersey for the 3 other fans....
These maps highlight the ridiculous, out-of-region geographic spread that the major conferences now have.
I'm not a "get off my lawn" type when it comes to most things, but I hate that TV $$$$$ has ruined the old conferences. There was something pure (is that the right word) about conferences being made up of similar insitutions, culturally and geographically.
It made sense, I guess. And it's not like I was against expansion in principle.
Nebraska was a fit in the Big 10. Colorado and Utah were fits in the Pac-12. South Carolina and Arkansas were fits in the SEC.
But, Maryland and Rutgers are not Big 10 schools. Louisville and ND are not ACC schools. West Virginia is not a Big 12 school. Missouri is not a SEC school. I don't know what the hell the American is. All the leftovers?
/rant
Could this information be any less fresh? And now we all have very positive vibes about playing in NYC after winning the championship - so, pretty weak post all around.
Every conference -- save ours -- is playing their conference tournament this week.
How is this "not fresh"? It's directly relevant, and timely.
I'm sure the OP feels bad for raining on your positive vibes.
Why is this community so eager to cannibalize posters? I don't get it.
Also interesting to note that Rutgers and Maryland are only the 5th and 12th weirdest teams for their conference geographically.
In my experience, driving only makes sense if I'm going somewhere with my family and my freeloading kids are going along. When two or fewer (just the wife and I) go somehwere or we go with friends who can pay their own way, everyone flies. We adults all get enough driving on our daily commutes.
iowa, wisc, illinois, nw, purdue, msu, UM and IN are all within a 3.5 hour drive to Chi. osu over 4.
similar story with Indy. only two or 3 schools are that close to NYC or Wash DC.
in moving the tournaments around rather than having them in a fixed location. Frankly, holding the Big East tournament in Columbus every year would be far dumber than anything the conferences actually do.
They are using math to solve a non-math problem. It's a stretch to even call it a problem, since most conferences seem to be happy with their present arrangements.
The one thing that map highlighted to me, is the value in moving the tournament around to different geographic locations to give every fan base an easy opportunity to attend periodically.
Take the B1G. Prior to the past two years, the tourney had moved back and forth between Indianapolis and Chicago with the idea being it is centrally located and they are cities fans would want to travel to. What that really means, is for teams on the far edges of the footprint, you had the same long trip every year.
I think it would be better to have a rotation of the Twin Cities, Chicago, Detroit, Indianapolis, Philadelphia, Washington DC, New York, and Omaha. This would give fans in all regions very easy access every few years and still have a few central locations to keep it balanced. Other than Omaha (which I hear is great for the baseball world series) all of those are large cities with easy air and highway access. They also are cities fans would be willing to visit for enjoyment.
I think it would be awesome for every B1G team to get to play approximately in their own back yard on a rotational basis.
This is a good idea. Hence, B1G won't implement it.
And it makes too much sense to implement.
When Philly's own Tony Carr was asked the obligatory "How does it feel to play in the center of the basketball universe?" on BTN, I really wanted him to reply "Did we play in the Spectrum? Damn, I thought we were still up in New York somewhere..."
Great research by these number crunchers, but two dimensional in its analysis and conclusion. It completely missed your point about the "weekend destination enjoyment factor" for those traveling in for the touney games. Though I didn't get St. Louis as the choice for the SEC - inconvenient location and much more fun destinations (New Orleans, Atlanta, Orlando, etc).
The elephant in the room that the article was missing? The power, politice and money between the good old boys running the conferences (Delaney and entourage) and the cities/venues. Don't tell me backroom deals arent made at the country clubs and "fact finding boondoggles". The players, students and fans are just pawns - they go where the good old boys in power decide to send them. I wouldn't be surprised to see that article around "amateur athletics" coming soon, and a day of reckoning for those in power. But who knows...
cheaper????
Also, fans know well in advance where the conference tournament will be staged. It's not like the Big Ten dropped the New York announcement on us at the last minute.
I could be wrong and someone may laugh at this statement and I am fine with that, but the suggested locations are actually not bad locations at all for a conference tournament really, so the purists of the blog who want ours in Chicago? Well done.
I haven't read the article, but Rutgers/ Maryland to Nebraska covers like 1/2 of the country, so isn't that obvious? Is there another conference that has so large of a distance between 2 schools?
Also, don't teams take private planes, so it's not much of an issue. How much worse is 2 hour vs. 4 hour flight on a private jet anyway?
but the students, Alumni and fans?
In the American Athletic Conference, there's UConn and SMU, which is about 1,700 miles apart. That's pretty stupid.
But conferences no longer really care about geography.
Piscataway to Lincoln is 1291 miles according to Google's suggested driving route. Seattle to Tempe is 1421 miles by the same criteria.
Thanks and my question was not very good, but I think the better question is how many legitimate tournement ready (and willing) cities does that (farthest teams) pass?
It would be interesting to see a point to point furthest to furthest mapping overlaid with NBA arenas.
Did anyone really have a problem with the location? I thought it was that the tournament had to be a week early to get that location...