My points:
1. The MWC needs a tournament (not only for the NCAAs but for an additional source of revenue)
2. It must be in Las Vegas (it is a far bigger draw than anywhere else)
3. The games should be played on a neutral court.

I do not know enough about arenas in Vegas to know if there is any place large enough to host the tournament, other than UNLV's homecourt, but if there is - it should be the place for future tournaments.

My 2 cents

mormonrasta wrote:

Gunk wrote:

You could just as easily say, what's the point of the regular season? Why not just have a tournament to decide who the best team is in the conference? You have to keep in mind the point of the season is to decide a team's seeding in the MWC tournament. The winner of the tournament then goes to the NCAA tournament.

Unfortunately you're buying into the devolution of sport. It used to be the regular season mattered much more than mere seeding, home court advantage, 1st round byes etc. Being a regular season champion used to mean that you are peerless among your fellow conference mates and you have earned the right to compete with other like champions in a tournament to settle who indeed is the champion of champions.

But due to flat out greed, not inherent fairness of competition, we now view "playoffs" as everything and the regular season meaningless other than for the purposes of seeding. Being the MWC champion now earns you the right to be eliminated by a 7th place Big East team. That sucks.


Gunk wrote:

If we decided not to have a MWC tournament it would take some agreeing on the NCAA committee and we might forfeit our automatic bid. By having a MWC tournament the MWC will have at least one team in the NCAA tournament every year, and which team goes is decided by the play of MWC teams, not by a selection committee. If CSU were to win the MCW tourney, they would get a NCAA tourney spot. You have to admit there is something fair about that guarentee.

L.A. would be nice but finding a venue that seats 10,000+ that is available for the whole weekend would be tough.

You don't need a conference tournament to determine a champion. It is NOT an NCAA rule. The Ivy League still does not have a conference tournament yet they get an auto bid. The Pac-10 had a conference tournament in the early '80s, then got rid of it, then brought it back. They didn't lose NCAA bids as a result.

Regarding your suggestion of CSU winning the tournament as having some sort of fairness, I completely disagree. It is not fair for a team to absolutely suck the entire year and be put in an arbitrary tournament with a team that has been by and large very good with the exact same chances of going to the NCAA tournament.

I think it is much more fair to give the autobid to the team that played the best over 3 months in the exact same conditions as the other teams in the conference, rather than giving the autobid to the team that is having a really good week.

You misinterpreted my comment on CSU. Under the current system we are guaranteed at least one team every year in the tournement, which is fair. If the autobid goes to the regular season champ, then that's fine since we would still have our spot. But I think such would hurt the MWC in the long run.

I realize the Ivy League does not have a tournement, and I actually think that hurts them. The most they every get in the tournement is one bid. Now, that may be because the Ivy League isn't a powerhouse bball conference (do we really care Cornell made it to the tourney for the first time since 1988 other than it makes for a good story), but with only the regular season champion making it into the tournament that doesn't leave much room to argue the validity of another team from the conference to join in the NCAA tourney. There is no chance for the 2nd place team or any other team in the conference to demonstate that they too are good enough to play in the NCAA tournament. With the regular season champ the autobid, what's left for the 2nd place team that may only be 2nd place because of one or two bad losses they had at the beginning of the year when a star player was out with injury?

Under the current system the 2nd place team has the chance to play for an invite. Now as far as sports are concerned comparing the MWC to the Ivy League is a bit like apples an oranges, but I don't think the Ivy League's structure helps them any in getting more than one bid and increasing their conference's prowess (something the MWC could use a little more of). With regular season champ as the autobid there is no need to schedule games against "tougher" teams to bolster up your RPI. All you have to do is win the regular season. You could even lose all your nonconference games as long as you won your conference and still get the auto bid, so preseason play becomes pointless as would your conference, just like the Ivy League.

I am opposed to the conference tournament being played on UNLV's home court every year, not necessarily because it makes it so hard for everyone else, but because it makes it so much easier for them. Especially because if a team is on the bubble and they make it to the conference championship, win or lose, they usually make it into the NCAA tournament.

But I set out to look at the data from regular season winning percentages and MWC tourney winning percentages since it moved to Vegas. I was sure they would show a clear advantage to UNLV, and disadvantage to everyone else. But it didn't really. UNLV won 63% of the regular season conference games and 69% (+6%) of the tourney games, but Utah was 60% and 62% (+2%). Shoot CSU would seem to have the biggest advantage with 25% and 55% (+30%), while BYU struggles at 67% and 40% (-17%) and Air Force blows with 59% and 0% (-59%).

I think that UNLV benefits from playing on their home court and would like to see it moved to the professional arena that is proposed for Vegas, but I think the bigger problem is that some teams seem to thrive in the do-or-die atmosphere, just like some thrive in the underdog role. So far UNLV and Utah have the best winning percentage in the MWC tourney and they also have the best NCAA tourney performances in the conference. They just seem to rise to the challenge of tourney time, while we all know of BYU's woes. We've got to change that culture, however that is done, and then I don't think where the conference tournament is played as long as it is not on someone's home court.

Sorry for the long post, but I just read Freakonomics and I am channelling my inner user-formerly-known-as-dalestephenson. (That guy knows his numbers.)

The Conference Tourny should be on the home floor of the regular season Champs! Period! End of discussion! Thank you very much. Hold the applause! Contact my agent for further arbitration issues.

There is no easy answer to this question, really. And I also realize that the MWC is currently getting a lot more respect than the WAC, for example (intentional emphasis on currently, considering how our Conference's executives are bound and determined to run our conference into the ground...).
However, ruminate with me, if you will, on the plight of our friends from the north at the end of the 03-04 season (Further north than that! You'll NEVER hear me call THEM friends!).
If it were three days before Selection Sunday, and you heard that a D-1 team had ONLY TWO LOSSES the ENTIRE SEASON, how many of you wouldn't assume (no matter what happened in the conference tournament) that such a team was a SHOO-IN for the Dance, and a likely 3 or 4 seed?! I know I would!!! Yet in '04, the USU Aggies (a GREAT team, by the way, who beat our impressive BYU squad that in the same year rocked a Final-Four team!), EASILY the WAC regular season champ, lost a heartbreaker upset to CS Northridge in the conference final, and found themselves on the outside looking in! That's right, with THREE LOSSES TOTAL, the Ag's were SCREWED by the Selection Committee, and were sent with their tail between their legs to the NIT. IIRC, they were only the second or third team in the history of the Tournament not to be selected at-large with only three losses. Idiotic!
Any given year, give BYU an uncharacteristically weak schedule (opponents having off years, for example), and how do we know that BYU couldn't be facing the same exact situation?! I realize that our name garners a bit more respect than that, but the point is, what does getting our work done early do for us if we're at risk for having it all mean nothing because of some upset in the conference tourney, ESPECIALLY when the current setup of our conference tournament favors the perennial two-seed SO STRONGLY?!? Safe to say, dropping a couple of seeds due to a Conference final loss almost GUARANTEES BYU a Big Dance first-round loss.

I have to agree. That is what happened last year as I recall.