Missouri

[Hugh Nunn]

Many of you critize teams for scheduling poor opponents, especially in the CCLA. I believe it is time that more teams in the West and South start doing more traveling. Most of the teams in the midwest have to travel south and west to get outside games in February and March, but April is a great time for teams in the South and West to reciprocate games that we have given in the past. I think that would help out tremendously in leveling out the playing field as far as strength and weakness of schedules.

The problem is, that so many teams want to come play the South and West that reciprocation becomes very difficult to live up to. It should be very clear as to whether reciprocation is expected before the game is scheduled. Even then, due to budgetary concerns, it may still be diffucult for teams to live up to those committments, unfortunately. When I was at Florida State, we had to turn down at least 7-10 games per year either at our place or nearby neutral locations. While we had many offers and attempts at a "home and home" series, we had just as many asking to make the game at our place an annual thing for spring break, etc.

With the growth of the MDIA and the disparity between the top 6 and the rest of even the top 25, lower ranked teams are probably going to have to do the bulk of the travelling in order to get say, a few WCLL games on their schedule.

Teams that also have first class facilities and happen to be near major airports (GA Tech, Lindenwood, etc.) really have it good.

[Danny Hogan]

Many of you critize teams for scheduling poor opponents, especially in the CCLA. I believe it is time that more teams in the West and South start doing more traveling. Most of the teams in the midwest have to travel south and west to get outside games in February and March, but April is a great time for teams in the South and West to reciprocate games that we have given in the past. .

FSU, GT,and VT are going to california
UF went to new orleans (only an 8 hour drive, but a home game for the LSA teams) and is going to michigan.
Auburn went to texas.

Realize it doesn't really solve the ccla home game complaint but they are making an effort to travel more so than in the past.

Also its tough to put together plane trips not involving spring break which is in late feb, early march. Are you guys doing that this weekend or do you have an early spring break?

[DG]

Many of you critize teams for scheduling poor opponents, especially in the CCLA. I believe it is time that more teams in the West and South start doing more traveling. Most of the teams in the midwest have to travel south and west to get outside games in February and March, but April is a great time for teams in the South and West to reciprocate games that we have given in the past. I think that would help out tremendously in leveling out the playing field as far as strength and weakness of schedules.

Dwayne,

In the pre-MDIA days, this used to drive us crazy at BYU. No one wanted to come to Provo at all. It was out of the way, etc. When we joined the RMILL, we had to play all of our games on the road for 2 years.

We did get some home and home series going, but it was tough.

Then BYU started getting home games through its RMILL schedule, and they figured out a way to get some other OOC games going. (i.e. a team coming to Provo the same weekend as CSU could get games with both teams) Of course, the final draw (and maybe the best one) was BYUTv.

I know that your situation is different. Unfortunately, at this point, the CCLA teams are almost forced to travel in order to get the national exposure. Everyone talks about the WCLL and RMLC, and knows those leagues the best. I guess I'm saying that you need to figure out a way to make the trips seem more compelling to the travelling team. As an example, Michigan has done a good job of this with their tournament.

Good luck to you guys this season...I'm looking forward to hearing more news about your team, especially in MN.

DG

[John Paul]

I'll tell you another thing BYU did. They helped pay some of the costs of teams coming out - picking up ground transportation (buses) and some of the hotel cost. They did that the first time we came out, and I know they did it for a few other teams as well. It's the same thing Denver (D1) has to do to get teams from the East out to play them - except that they have to cover the entire cost of the trip for a team like Virgnia to come out. We ended up returning the favor by picking up their hotel cost the first time BYU came to play us here.

We started the Invitational to get good home OOC games. We knew we were capable of playing with anybody, but at the time we started the Invitational nobody else in the midwest was. We had a hard time talking highly ranked teams into coming out for one good game. We invited three teams from different conferences to come for one weekend, giving all of them an opportunity to play ranked teams they wouldn't have scheduled otherwise. Of course, having an indoor facility helps make the trip more palatable for warm-weather teams, but we also tried to make it a well-run event, similar to the national tournament in many ways. We don't charge the teams for coming or even for their nuetral site officials fees, which we pick up. It's a model I'd recommend for anyone to look at if they are having trouble getting good teams to come to them.

[Vols2]

Many of you critize teams for scheduling poor opponents, especially in the CCLA. I believe it is time that more teams in the West and South start doing more traveling. Most of the teams in the midwest have to travel south and west to get outside games in February and March, but April is a great time for teams in the South and West to reciprocate games that we have given in the past. .

FSU, GT,and VT are going to california
UF went to new orleans (only an 8 hour drive, but a home game for the LSA teams) and is going to michigan.
Auburn went to texas.

Realize it doesn't really solve the ccla home game complaint but they are making an effort to travel more so than in the past.

Also its tough to put together plane trips not involving spring break which is in late feb, early march. Are you guys doing that this weekend or do you have an early spring break?

As well...Tenn. will be traveling to Buffalo in April.

[Ken Lovic]

One thing is also timing. If we play OOC games this time of year (Feb and March) to those teams from the colder, wetter areas that want to get outside, we push off our conference games until April. We in fact (GT) do not play another conference game until April and only play OOC games in march.

Also, those teams looking to travel south use their spring break to do so and our spring break times are not the time of year we want to travel to those areas the mentioned teams are leaving to come south... man, sounds like a who's on first conversation.

anyhow- i would venture to guess there are not many teams out there that travel to far south or west for OOC games in April with league tournaments and nationals right around the corner.

[onpoint]

True enough, very similar to college basketball. Get your traveling done early and play your conference schedule in the latter stages of the year.

[OAKS]

So according to the SELC forum,
Tennessee - 7
Missouri - 4

Granted UT is knocking on the top 25, but Missouri is just digging themselves in deeper... So unless a lot of mid-level teams stumble, it looks like the only way they make it to Blaine is through the AQ.