Tuesday, October 28, 2008

MVC - Mountain West Challenge


If you haven't heard about it yet, click here. I think this is a brilliant move. It gives the Bears another quality non-conference game with potentially national exposure. A win over a nationally recognized program like Utah, BYU or UNLV could push the Bears off the bubble and into the Tournament. Fred Eck "Eck the Cat" and I have been advocating a conference v. conference match up for the MVC for years. We generally thought that the MAC would be more likely, but the Mountain West is a better conference.

I do have two concerns though, both media related: (1) no television contract yet; and (2) with the Mountain West, by definition, on the West Coast, will anyone east of Evansville care about the "Challenge."

Let me the first to ask: WHO WANTS TO WATCH THE BEARS IN VEGAS?

2 comments:

Martin said...

This is great news. Though I agree w/ Justin that without a TV contract, it would kinda suck. Surely we can at least get them to show all the games on the Deuce or ESPNU or something. Although ESPN may be the evil empire at times, there's no doubting that guaranteeing a spot for MVC games in November/December on their stations would be great for the conference.

Matt said...

Agreed we need TV.

I also hope they are planning on getting out of the Bracketbuster for this. Is O'Reilly still the top sponsor? That might make it a little tough, but two of these a year seems like a bad idea.