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I've seen some speculation that the league may stay at 9. Why?

With an odd number of teams, that means one team is off every weekend. With weekends generally being the best attendance days, why wouldn't the league want at least ten members? What is the value in having somebody always on a bye? Seems like a big waste and creates situations where a team has significant extra prep time before a game with a conference opponent.

Bluejay wrote:I've seen some speculation that the league may stay at 9. Why?

With an odd number of teams, that means one team is off every weekend. With weekends generally being the best attendance days, why wouldn't the league want at least ten members? What is the value in having somebody always on a bye? Seems like a big waste and creates situations where a team has significant extra prep time before a game with a conference opponent.

Because there are some people out there that are absolutely infatuated with the idea of a round robin. Some people also think that it is impossible to get 3-5 schools from the midwest who can play acceptable levels of basketball. . Others think that Fox is more than willing to pay the same amount of money for fewer games just so it can show 2 providence v. DePaul games a year. Still others think that the C7 presidents woke up one day decided to leave the big east and are just now figuring out who they are inviting into their league. A few still deny all economical reason and think that you can make more money in a smaller league then a bigger one. And finally the real reason for the speculation is.... hack reporting, blogs and internet economics. Bloggers and internet reporters make money from advertisers based on the amount of viewers of their articles. This is a hot button issue for a lot of fans so posting that one team is in and one team is out every other day will get you infinite number of views. Meaning you don't need to have any facts, and can keep rehashing the same rumors and get $... and isn't that what realignment is all about?

The Valley currently plays a true round robin with 10 teams, stuffs that horrible Bracket Buster in there AND has their conference tourney a week earlier. A true round robin shouldn't be an issue with 10 if that is what they really want.