Just a few years ago, The Colonial Athletic Association was one of the top midmajor conferences, essentially equal to the MVC. They had strong basketball schools like VCU, George Mason, Old Dominion who all left to move to better, more lucrative conferences. As a result, the CAA has fallen from their top midmajor spot, to a much lower level, similar to where the MVC is at now. They are now a mediocre, 1-bid conference.
So is the CAA's comissioner derelict, too?
The Mountain West is experiencing the same phenomenon. Thay have lost strong programs like BYU, TCU, Utah to other conferences, and this past year they fell to the 10th best conference in RPI, their worst in decades. They were also a 1-bid conference this past season. So is the MWC commissioner at fault?
And what about Conference USA? They used to be a perrennial top 10 RPI basketball conference, but they have lost several good programs (Houston, Memphis, Tulsa, SMU, and others), and they have become a joke. This past year they fell all the way to an abysmal 23rd ranking in conference RPI, and also were a 1-bid conference! Should they fire their commissioner?
And there are other examples of conferences getting weaker and weaker that I could continue to list. The only non-Power 6 conferences to get more than 1 bid this year were the Atlantic 10 (3), the American Athletic Association (2), and the WAC (2). Meanwhile, the ACC got 9 bids, the Big Ten and Big East 7 each, the Big 12 6, the SEC 5, and the Pac-12 4 bids. That means the Power 6 conferences got 32 of the 36 available at-large bids, and every one of the other 26 conference got a total of 4 at-large bids among them!
23 conferences other than the AAC, A10, and WCC were lousy 1-bid conferences. Should their commissioners all be held accountable for that?
The problem is not confined to just the MVC, and I don't see what the MVC commissioner could have done to prevent the fall. If anything, I think the MVC has done a pretty good job maintaining themselves as a respectable mid-major conference, despite other conferences cherry-picking their best teams.
If I could find any fault, it was taking Loyola in 2013 to replace Creighton. I was in favor of selecting the very best team from the Horizon or another comparable conference. But Loyola was nowhere near the best program in the Horizon League. Let's hope they don't make that mistake again, and go after the best program(s). But that was not Doug Elgin's decision. The decision was made by a vote of the university presidents who thought adding the Chicago market was more important.
