A schedule with four DI ooc home games is actually better than what we have endured in the past few years. Here is our fundamental problem. Fans at other Horizon League schools are discussing league basketball attendance figures that the NCAA got around to releasing. We actually finished in the middle (2400+) ahead of CSU and Detroit. Wright State led with only around 3800, probably around half of what they drew twenty years ago. So at mid-majors, attendance is tough is this age of tv saturation of the big boys. Attendance is even tougher here at YSU where casual fans harbor little interest in the game of basketball itself. So weak schedules repel fans but, without fans, we have no money to schedule better opponents. Nice. For me, since we were able to schedule those four DI games, I would play only one junk team and not three. Either play fewer games than most or go after two more money games.
Indy, the analogy to Dayton, Morehead, and Duquesne does not work. You and I know the true nature of those football programs, but casual fans do not. They recognize Dayton and Duquesne because of their significant basketball traditions. And the NCAA gave a cloak of respectability to those programs when they stupidly admitted the NEC and the Pioneer leagues into the playoffs. Thus, these are precisely the tune-up games we should be feasting on.
