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MAC basketball tourney scaled back 1st round games will not be held at Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland

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June 10, 2009

 

By David Carducci

Record-Courier staff writer

The Mid-American Conference’s inability to find a comparable home for its women’s basketball tournament has forced a rollback of both its men’s and women’s basketball tournaments for the next two years.

In a move based on cost-cutting and gender equity, the conference’s Council of Presidents voted this week to revert back to the men’s and women’s tournament formats previously used from 2000 through 2006, maintaining full 12-team fields, but with first-round games moving back to campus sites.

Every men’s and women’s tournament game had been played in Cleveland during each of the last three seasons.

Only the final eight teams in both tournaments will advance to Quicken Loans Arena in Cleveland in 2010 and 2011.

Last year, the men’s tournament brought in close to $800,000 in revenue compared with nearly $17,000 from the women’s event. Based in part on that disparity, the MAC’s presidents decided playing both entire tournaments under one roof was no longer fiscally responsible.

According to Kent State University Athletic Director Laing Kennedy, the league could not consider cutting back the women’s tournament without making the same changes to the men’s event.

“I champion this. Both tournaments have to be treated equally,” Kennedy said. “And with the equality of the two tournaments, we just couldn’t get 12 (men’s) and 12 (women’s teams) at Quicken Loans Arena. It just wasn’t acceptable. From my perspective, this is a good alternative.”

Geno Ford, KSU men’s basketball head coach, called the changes to the men’s tournament, “less than ideal.”

“It’s definitely not ideal from the perspective of the coaches, the players and the fans,” Ford said. “However, as this has all been explained to me, I don’t think there were a lot of viable options other than what was selected.”

Ford said the MAC men’s coaches voted 12-0 last month to recommend keeping its entire tournament in Cleveland. That may have been possible if the league had managed to find a less-expensive home for the women’s tournament.

Toledo’s new Lucas County Arena made a recent bid to take over as host of the women’s event. However, when the dates couldn’t fit into the arena’s schedule, the MAC’s Council of Presidents decided to follow a recommendation by the league’s Joint Committee and voted to return to the old tournament formats used prior to 2007.

“The MAC Tournament was the crowning achievement of the league,” said former KSU men’s head coach Jim Christian, who now coaches at Texas Christian University. “The atmosphere and enthusiasm of every fan from every school was one of the things that made the MAC so special. You never knew what was going to happen and who was going to emerge, and that was the beauty of having all 12 teams there.”

Christian said he often had friends, fellow coaches and NBA scouts come up to him after the MAC Tournament “to say they didn’t know the league was so big time.”

“I’ve coached in the Big East and now I’m in the Mountain West, and the MAC Tournament was on par with those tournaments,” Christian said.

New MAC commissioner Jon Steinbrecher called the changes to the MAC Tournaments “a short-term plan of action” on Monday. The Council of Presidents have endorsed a recommendation by the league’s athletic directors to develop a fiscally responsible plan over the next 12 to 16 months to arrive at two 12-team tournaments at separate, neutral-site venues beginning in 2012, according to Steinbrecher.

Kennedy said the league is committed to keeping the men’s event at Quicken Loans Arena.

“It’s a two-year project, but maintaining the men’s tournament at The Q, which is one of the finest basketball arenas in the world and the home of the greatest player in the world in LeBron James, is very important,” Kennedy said. “With the MAC men’s basketball tournament in Cleveland, the national perception is that it is really good. At the same time, we have to have something of equal value on the women’s side.”

Lucas County Arena still is considered a viable site for a future MAC women’s tournament. The league will also investigate other arenas within its footprint.

“Hopefully we can look forward to returning to the format we lost and maybe even regaining the ground we will lose by moving back to neutral sites for the next two years,” Ford said. “When we go back to 12 teams at one site, hopefully we can make the tournaments even bigger and better.”

 

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David Carducci can be reached at dcarducci@recordpub.com

 




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