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AF_Puma | Friday, March 9, 2007, 3:29 pm
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By Jim Vallen
COUGARBLUE
Is playing The Mountain West Conference (MWC) basketball tournament at the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas an unfair advantage to UNLV?
Former legendary University of Utah basketball coach, Rick Majerus, always claimed that UNLV had an unfair advantage in playing the conference tournament on their home court. He elicited former BYU coach Steve Cleveland’s support in having their schools press for a change and finally convinced enough officials and a change occurred.
Those two vocal leaders are now gone and three years into a contract with the Pepsi Center in Denver, that allowed an option in the fourth year, four members of the executive committee of the MWC presidents council voted to return back to the Thomas & Mack Center in Las Vegas and were able to convince the remaining school presidents to approve.
MWC teams were reported in the media to have lost anywhere from $20,000 to $30,000 per school since the tournament had moved from it’s original site, at the Thomas & Mack Center three years ago.
In the four years the league played in Las Vegas, the average annual attendance was 11,396 with 2003 averaging a high of 13,483. The average attendance in the three years in Denver was about 8,650—significantly lower.
During that last year in Denver, the MWC took a poll of the attendees asking where they would like to see the event held in the future. The Las Vegas Review Journal reported that Las Vegas was the runaway winner.
So do dollars and fan satisfaction rule?
What do the other conferences do?
All the other major conferences except one all have tournament championships at neutral sites. Here’s where they are held:
The Big Ten Tournament – United Center is in Chicago, IL, home of the NBA Chicago Bulls and NHL Blackhawks.
The Atlantic Coast Conference Tournament – St. Pete Times Forum in Tampa, FL, home of the AFL Tampa Bay Storm.
The Big XII Conference – Ford Center in Oklahoma City, OK, home to the NBA Oklahoma City Hornets and the CHL Oklahoma City Blazers.
The Southeastern Conference – Georgia Dome in Atlanta, GA, which is home to the NFL Atlanta Falcons.
The Pacific Coast Conference Tournament – Staples Center in Los Angeles, CA, home for NBA teams, the LA Lakers and the LA Clippers and NHL LA Kings.
The only exception is the Big East Tournament, which is at Madison Square Garden, which consequently is home court of conference member St. Johns. But it’s “The Garden” and it’s also home to the NBA Knicks and many other tournaments and events, so it’s not quite the same thing as the Thomas & Mack Center.
For the other two comparably sized conferences like the MWC—the Western Athletic Conference Tournament is in the Pan American Center, which is home to New Mexico State and the Conference USA Tournament is at the FedEx Forum in Memphis, TN, home to the University of Memphis and the NBA Memphis Grizzlies. So consequently both similar conferences do the same as the MWC.
Other venues
There had been some talk about holding the event at a neutral site in Las Vegas, such as the MGM Grand Garden, Orleans Arena or Mandalay Bay Events Center. But the buildings aren't as large, and all the properties have sports books that accept wagers on NCAA games. Would the NCAA sanction a league tournament played at a casino? That’s probably about as safe as leaving a troop of Boy Scouts in the Uinta Mountains in the summer time unattended with each boy equipped with a butane lighter and left with the instructions to not start any fires.
Bill Riley, sports radio talk host for AM 700 KZN The Zone in Salt Lake City, Utah, interviewed Craig Thompson, Mountain West Conference (MWC) Commissioner, at the MWC basketball tournament this week. Bill had preceded his interview with the comments on his radio program (1:00 PM to 4 PM weekdays) where there was some debate with local fans as to whether or not playing in Las Vegas gave too much advantage to the local home team, the UNLV Rebels. He debated the topic of the issue of gaming as it relates to those other sites and said he’d ask the Commissioner about that.
Bill Riley: “Everyone admitted, and I think you did too, that while Denver is a great city, a great venue at the Pepsi Center, it just wasn’t a good fit for the conference. We’re all happy to be coming back to Vegas. When you guys choose to come back, did you give any thought at all to not being at the Thomas & Mack and maybe looking at one of the other venues in town or was the Thomas & Mack always the place?”
Craig Thompson: “We really didn’t for a couple of reasons. One, even if we had gone for one of those other facilities, it still would have been a pro-UNLV crowd for all intents and purposes although UNLV would not have played in there. I think that is a little over-stated at times that they are familiar with the building and such. The basket is still ten feet tall. It’s the same rim. It’s the same backboard. The difference would be 16,000 people on your side that might not be there at another site.
The other reason is that arguably so, those facilities all have gaming connections. And it’s certainly not just because of the NCAA, but also our own conference policies. I think it would be hard for us to go to a MGM or the Orleans Arena or some place where it is literally attached to a casino.”
Bill Riley: “I know that the Orleans is probably a little bit too small, but the MGM might be a little bit bigger, but the gaming thing, you can walk outside of the Thomas & Mack in any direction and people are still gaming right?”
Craig Thompson: “Well absolutely.”
Bill Riley: “It’s more of a thing of appearances than anything else.”
Craig Thompson: “I think it is. We’re at hotels staying where some have gaming and some do not so I think that is kind of a mute point.”
Wins and losses
The bottom line for me though is the effect that playing on the home court of one of the participants of the tourney has on the success of that team.
Let’s look and see if there has been any noticeable affect for BYU playing UNLV on their home court in the past.
BYU’s record all-time against UNLV
1980-1981
At Provo – BYU 86 UNLV 77
At Las Vegas – BYU 92 UNLV 90 3OT
1981-1982
At Provo – BYU 63 UNLV 66
At Las Vegas – BYU 50 UNLV 52
1997-1998
At Provo – BYU 76 UNLV 84
At Las Vegas – BYU 63 UNLV 76
1999-2000
At Provo – BYU 83 UNLV 82
At Las Vegas BYU 77 UNLV 75
At Las Vegas – BYU 56 UNLV 79
2000-2001
At Provo – BYU 91 UNLV 63
At Las Vegas – BYU 56 UNLV 68
2001-2002
At Provo – BYU 60 UNLV 47
At Las Vegas – BYU 70 UNLV 73
2002-2003
At Provo – BYU 85 UNLV 77
At Las Vegas - BYU 54 UNLV 61
2003-2004
At Provo – BYU 64 UNLV 61
At Las Vegas – BYU 89 UNLV 88
2004-2005
At Provo – BYU 66 UNLV 76
At Las Vegas – BYU 82 UNLV 72 OT
2005-2006
At Provo – BYU 75 UNLV 72
At Las Vegas – BYU 72 UNLV 82
2006-2007
At Provo – BYU 90 UNLV 63
At Las Vegas – BYU 75 UNLV 83
In summary, BYU is 8-3 (72.7%) against UNLV playing in Provo while they are 4-8 (33.3%) against them playing in Las Vegas.
Here’s how the other teams in the MWC have fared playing against UNLV while playing at home versus playing in Las Vegas [Note: Data being used for the other conference teams is from the period of 1997 to present]:
Air Force is 4-6 (40.0%) at home while 1-8 (11.1%) in Las Vegas
Colorado State is 2-8 (25.0%) at home while 3-8 (27.3%) in Las Vegas
New Mexico is 5-4 (55.6%) at home while 2-9 (18.2%) in Las Vegas
San Diego State is 3-5 (37.5%) at home while 4-7 (36.4%) in Las Vegas
TCU is 0-3 (0.0%) at home while 1-2 (33.3%) in Las Vegas
Utah is 7-1 (87.5%) at home while 5-8 (38.5%) in Las Vegas
Wyoming is 5-5 (50.0%) at home while 2-9 (18.2%) in Las Vegas
MWC teams win 49.3% of their games they play against UNLV at their home while only winning 27.2% of their games against UNLV while playing in the Thomas & Mack Center.
So here’s the bottom line related to wins and losses. According to historical data, a team playing UNLV at the Thomas & Mack Center is 22.1% more likely to lose than if they were to play them at their own home.
Conclusion
I don’t think anyone can provide data to indicate if the most significant reason that UNLV does better playing MWC teams on their home floor is due to the increased fans or there is just something about playing on your home court that makes you play better. You could look at the data for some of the other conferences that conduct their tournaments in cities where they have teams in their conference based (Chicago for Northwestern, Los Angeles for UCLA and USC) and that might provide more of a definitive answer.
To each league money is one of the key focuses and goals of the conference administration (that’s why they thought the CSTV idea was such a great idea). They are to position its members in the best financial scenario that they can. Using that guideline, it seems, based on attendance figures that the various MWC teams will benefit more collectively with the MWC tournament being in Las Vegas, at least due to ticket sales and satisfaction of the fan base. Some have mentioned San Diego as being a possible location as there are arenas of sufficient size to meet the needs of a tournament and it is a tourist destination. For the sake of a sufficient neutral site in a large city, the tournament could be played in Salt Lake City at the Energy Solutions Center or somewhere in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area, but once again these cities don’t have the overall drawing power and you have to admit that Las Vegas is pretty accessible by most of the MWC teams.
Las Vegas has something that none of these other cities have and it is the volume of tourist attractions at very reasonable prices. There are probably a lot more cheaper airfares to Las Vegas and costs for food, hotel rooms, etc. than practically any other city in the United States because the city basically exists to entertain and they know that once they get you there at a lower cost that you’ll spend more and more of your money. I used to work for a fork lift company that would practically give away a fork lift because they knew they would make more profits on the maintenance and selling high priced parts that could only be purchased through them than they could make competing price wise with other fork lift companies in just the sale of the fork lift and they did. Same concept. Las Vegas is an entertainment Mecca.
But if the tournament is to be held in Las Vegas from henceforth, In my opinion other venues should be looked at to even the playing field because if you are giving an advantage to one team as the statistics seem to bear out, then you are also benefiting them more financially. The perfect solution could be if Las Vegas was ever awarded a NBA franchise. But in all honesty, allowing UNLV to do better in the conference tournament because they are on their own home court is giving them a substantial advantage. UNLV will win more tournament games than otherwise which will lead to them being more likely to more often win the tournament or enhance their at-large position for the NCAA tournament. Appearances in the NCAA tournament benefit your team financially all across the board especially as it relates to recruiting and such. It’s really not right that such an advantage exists and that is exactly the reason that the larger conferences are not allowing such an inequity. NCAA basketball is a big business.
I believe that it should at least be looked into if the NCAA would possibly even allow the use of the other venues in Las Vegas. If they would not, then still taking into consideration all the variables noted, it probably would remain more advantageous as a whole for the conference to continue the MWC tournament in Las Vegas and all fans (at least from the eight other MWC schools) to continue to hope and dream that one day the city will land a NBA franchise for which a basketball venue will be constructed.
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