Old Titan Posted March 6, 2023 Author Share Posted March 6, 2023 This is what seperates ORUsports.com from almost every other fan forum out there: well-measured and communicated opinions from every angle of any debate. Buncha freaking grown-ups, what are we supposed to do wich ya?? 1 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
dbl78 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 I will begin by saying this is just a thought off the top of my head, but back in the 70's when ORU was an independent, the Administartion came up with the idea to form another conference, and helped lead the charge to make it happen. Maybe it is time to consider that option again. I cannot imagine that UMKC, Denver, WIU, and Omaha are pleased with the Dakota-centric vision of the conference. If that were the starting point and a couple of other schools were added from Missouri, Arkansas, north Texas it could become a nice regional group. Again I have no idea if it is realistic or not - just trying to come up with another option. However, the thought of losing three or four members of the conference might send chills up the spines (if they have any) of the bureaucrats in Souix Falls. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ORU82 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 Just a point of clarification, the American Athletic Conference is not limited to just football schools, Wichita State is a member and does not have a football team. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ORUJason Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 19 minutes ago, ORU82 said: Just a point of clarification, the American Athletic Conference is not limited to just football schools, Wichita State is a member and does not have a football team. Yes I did come across that after I originally posted. ORU would need at least as much success as Wichita State had in the tournament for 5-10 years in order to even be considered to be desirable enough as a strong baseball/basketball school for AAC consideration. TU would do everything they could to block it so even in that scenario it would probably not happen. Might need some other teams to leave the conference as well and then there would be a long list of other interested teams and we would probably have to add women's softball (and possibly other sports?) as well. Sounds like a fairly unlikely scenario. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SonofaLegend Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 2 hours ago, ORUJason said: I think there might be a little bit of an overly negative reaction pointed toward the Summit League Conference leadership. It is inherently difficult to keep every school in a conference happy. In a conference like the Summit League, the conference commissioner is trying to keep the teams in their conference from wanting to leave. The longer he can pull that off, the more stable the conference appears and the more attractive the conference seems. Maximizing the revenue from all streams (TV, conference tournament, etc.) helps the funding of the conference and the ability if possible to pass on any funds back to member institutions, such as from the NCAA tournament participation payouts. Until someone can show me a realistically better landing spot for ORU, I think we should appreciate the stability and opportunities that the Summit League has provided in the past and currently provides for us. From previous discussions, it seems clear that ORU would have to add women's softball to even be considered for the Missouri Valley, and the last time they added teams, it did not appear that they ever seriously considered ORU. Several years back we found out pretty quickly that the Southland Conference is worse on the distance of travel and in the quality of their member institutions. The Sun Belt only wants football schools. The Ohio Valley conference is too far away and would be worse on travel without providing any increased competitive benefit. The WAC is very unstable and much worse on travel. The Horizon is farther away, does not seem interested, and does not provide any increased competitive benefit. The American Athletic Conference is a football-only conference. The Summit clearly is by far the best current situation for ORU. The Missouri Valley used to be a step-up type of conference that we could aspire toward, but they have lost many of their high quality teams, so it could be debated as to whether that would even be a better option. I think that is an interesting discussion. As far as the location of the conference tournament, the Sioux Falls area is fairly central geographically. Omaha would also be a fairly central location, but farther for the 5 northern schools (Dakotas and St. Thomas). The SDSU fanbase provides a lot of local support since it is only 30 minutes away. We do not even know if ORU/Tulsa Sports Commission has recently submitted a bid for the conference tournament. I think most of the decisions the Conference has made are very logical. A competitive ORU is good for the conference and I would think that the Dakota schools would see it that way. When we are more competitive, it increases our influence and clout. The Conference absolutely needs to improve their TV/media/streaming deals to hopefully increase funding, exposure, and accessibility. The most important thing about the conference basketball tournaments is that regardless of where they occur, that they are as fair as possible for all the participants. I felt that ORU's game last night was officiated very fairly. I think what bothered me is that the free throw disparity between Omaha and SDSU did NOT seem fair. The commissioner needs to ensure absolute fairness and emphasize that with the officials. If the tournament is perceived as being advantaged toward SDSU in any way, several other schools will not be happy about that including ORU. In most/possibly all of the other sports, they rotate the site of the tournament to the previous regular season champion. That is very fair and has benefitted ORU's baseball program significantly. Rather than saying that ORU needs to look for a better conference, ORU should be working to support the Summit League so that it will remain as stable as possible. I am absolutely in favor of ORU submitting a proposal to seed the basketball tournaments like the West Coast Conference does. I have no idea if there would be 6 member schools that would support this idea, but it makes a lot of sense to me. However, ORU has not been a 1 or 2 seed very often over our recent history, so it might not always benefit us as much as you might think unless we remain very competitive into the future. The free throw disparity last night is one of the worst I have ever seen, but I hope that the commissioner has zero influence on the that one way or another. I'm sure the commissioner works hard at keeping all the teams happy, I just haven't seen any evidence for it. Is there a better situation we could jump to? Maybe not, and that's how I feel we are being treated. To Mills point, it's an unfortunate situation being expected to travel to South Dakota every year, to play in a hostile environment without fans. Are there other conferences with permanent championships hosted in a members back yard? Whether we have a better situation lined up or not, the league has shown they don't intend to make changes that would put the best teams in the best position to win in the NCAA tournament. Their focus is maximizing revenue from this tournament. Mills has proven he can build a program, and great as this season has been as a fan, it has just proved that despite an extremely successful season, our opportunity to play in the NCAA requires winning three games in South Dakota every year. If I were a head coach, that'd be a tough pill to be expected to swallow. I hope we can find a compromise that works for Mills! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nodak651 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 Never realized you had such a whiney fan base until now. Sioux Falls is about a 5 hour drive or less from 7 member schools. The other options, Omaha and KC, are literally the same city as member schools. But that's fine? Complain about midco but provide nothing yourselves, and ORU doesn't even provide its feed to espn+ during the season for easy viewing like midco does. Also, pretty sure DU and Omaha were advocates of commissioner hockey becoming the new Summit League commissioner. Ask your cable provider to add midco sports - it's on Comcast in the twin cities. If your fan base is so large you should have no issue getting your cable provider to add that channel. Kick rocks. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Otis 83 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 22 minutes ago, nodak651 said: Never realized you had such a whiney fan base until now. Sioux Falls is about a 5 hour drive or less from 7 member schools. The other options, Omaha and KC, are literally the same city as member schools. But that's fine? Complain about midco but provide nothing yourselves, and ORU doesn't even provide its feed to espn+ during the season for easy viewing like midco does. Also, pretty sure DU and Omaha were advocates of commissioner hockey becoming the new Summit League commissioner. Ask your cable provider to add midco sports - it's on Comcast in the twin cities. If your fan base is so large you should have no issue getting your cable provider to add that channel. Kick rocks. Go back to your own board. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Titan Posted March 6, 2023 Author Share Posted March 6, 2023 24 minutes ago, nodak651 said: Never realized you had such a whiney fan base until now. Sioux Falls is about a 5 hour drive or less from 7 member schools. The other options, Omaha and KC, are literally the same city as member schools. But that's fine? Complain about midco but provide nothing yourselves, and ORU doesn't even provide its feed to espn+ during the season for easy viewing like midco does. Also, pretty sure DU and Omaha were advocates of commissioner hockey becoming the new Summit League commissioner. Ask your cable provider to add midco sports - it's on Comcast in the twin cities. If your fan base is so large you should have no issue getting your cable provider to add that channel. Kick rocks. BUT WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN FOR UND HOCKEY??? P.S. It's a 600-mile drive due north to Sioux Falls from Tulsa, and we don't own snow chains. And we're not flying into Sioux Falls or Sioux City this time of year; we all saw "The Buddy Holly Story"... 2 2 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
West-River Jack Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 I am not going to dispute your concerns. I understand. I have season tickets for SDSU football and I drive a 700 mile round trip for each home game that I attend. I have some questions as I am not extremely familiar with Tulsa or ORU. How many fans routinely attend ORU games? Men's games? Women's games? I only watch an occasional game from the Mabee Center and it appears that most of the fans must sit on the side that is not shown on the TV view because the visible attendance makes it look like scores to hundreds of people in attendance instead of the thousands that are sometime reported. Would Tulsa host in the BOK? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Texasgrip Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 The average attendance for men's BB this year at the Mabee Center was about 5300. I haven't seen numbers for the women's games - although it has suffered (like most of the programs I'm sure) since they split the mens/womens games and travels. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Titan Posted March 6, 2023 Author Share Posted March 6, 2023 15 minutes ago, West-River Jack said: I am not going to dispute your concerns. I understand. I have season tickets for SDSU football and I drive a 700 mile round trip for each home game that I attend. I have some questions as I am not extremely familiar with Tulsa or ORU. How many fans routinely attend ORU games? Men's games? Women's games? I only watch an occasional game from the Mabee Center and it appears that most of the fans must sit on the side that is not shown on the TV view because the visible attendance makes it look like scores to hundreds of people in attendance instead of the thousands that are sometime reported. Would Tulsa host in the BOK? Are you really expecting anyone who cheers for ORU (in Oklahoma) to engage you in a debate as to whether the current arrangement is somehow equitable? Based on reported attendance figures?? How's this: host it ANYWHERE that is at least 100 miles away from any of the state schools in the conference and that has a major airport and enough bigger hotels for far-flung participants. Like, Minneapolis for example. Happy? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jmg1984 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 1 hour ago, nodak651 said: Never realized you had such a whiney fan base until now. Sioux Falls is about a 5 hour drive or less from 7 member schools. The other options, Omaha and KC, are literally the same city as member schools. But that's fine? Complain about midco but provide nothing yourselves, and ORU doesn't even provide its feed to espn+ during the season for easy viewing like midco does. Also, pretty sure DU and Omaha were advocates of commissioner hockey becoming the new Summit League commissioner. Ask your cable provider to add midco sports - it's on Comcast in the twin cities. If your fan base is so large you should have no issue getting your cable provider to add that channel. Kick rocks. You can watch all the ORU home games from our website. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Eaglefan 21 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 Just now, jmg1984 said: You can watch all the ORU home games from our website. Also, it’s free! 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Sterns78 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 Personal opinion: Coach's comments were all about Selection Sunday. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nodak651 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 7 minutes ago, Old Titan said: Are you really expecting anyone who cheers for ORU (in Oklahoma) to engage you in a debate as to whether the current arrangement is somehow equitable? Based on reported attendance figures?? How's this: host it ANYWHERE that is at least 100 miles away from any of the state schools in the conference and that has a majpr airport for far-flung participants. Like, Minneapolis for example. Happy? Not sure if serious... games would be like a mile from St. Thomas. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Titan Posted March 6, 2023 Author Share Posted March 6, 2023 6 minutes ago, nodak651 said: Not sure if serious... I was thinking the same about your request. A land-grant state university, with thousands more students, alumni and fans, thinks it's fair to host a conference tournament annually in the largest city in their state just 30 miles from their campus. And wonders why one of the smallest schools in the conference, a private school 600 miles away, whines about having to travel north each year during a week on the calendar when the weather for travel along the way can charitably be described as "sketchy". Serious as a March blizzard in the Dakotas, friend... P.S. Remind me again how the weather was today in Sioux Falls? #rhetoricalquestion Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
tmh8286 Posted March 6, 2023 Share Posted March 6, 2023 19 minutes ago, Old Titan said: I was thinking the same about your request. A land-grant state university, with thousands more students, alumni and fans, thinks it's fair to host a conference tournament annually in the largest city in their state just 30 miles from their campus. And wonders why one of the smallest schools in the conference, a private school 600 miles away, whines about having to travel north each year during a week on the calendar when the weather for travel along the way can charitably be described as "sketchy". Serious as a March blizzard in the Dakotas, friend... P.S. Remind me again how the weather was today in Sioux Falls? #rhetoricalquestion Maybe you should remind HIM of how the weather was in Tulsa today . . . Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Old Titan Posted March 6, 2023 Author Share Posted March 6, 2023 1 minute ago, tmh8286 said: Maybe you should remind HIM of how the weather was in Tulsa today . . . Folks up there get suicidal as it is with spring not coming till Father's Day; I don't want blood on my hands... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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