Will COVID-19 be the needle that finally bursts the sports bubble?

Our donations are up, and have outpaced inflation pretty well. College tuition is another story, but I have to chalk that up to two different economies.

As for winning FCS titles, I, as a fan and alumnus/supporter, cherish the finish at 18 last year way more than the I-AA, FCS championships. They were championships...but... Last year App was a few votes and an unexplainable loss to Georgia Southern from the Cotton Bowl.

Plus, the experience of New Orleans is also better than Chattanooga or the Dallas suburb they have in FCS now. For both the fans and players.

 

I have never really cared about Bedlam, but I'm a big-time Sooner fan now. Riley has effectively agreed to a competitive imbalance in the name of what he and his school's actual medical officials think is the best for their players. Sooners will be back on July 1. The Great Mullet of the Plains was bitter that he couldn't have his players back on May 1.

 

In fairness to “The Man,” Riley’s seat is considerably cooler.

 

He's got his annual semifinal loss to SEC school wrapped up every year. They seem OK with that.

 

Interesting article here. There's a lot of talk about how the G5 can cut costs, particularly outside of football/MBB. I wonder how they plan to seed the conference tournament without a conference season, but that will come, I suppose.

I really hope that UAB gets an AAC invite. That's a better fit than the current C-USA and since most of the AAC came from the old C-USA there are long term rivalries there with schools like Houston, Memphis, and Cincinnati. I recently found out that UAB was offered a slot in the AAC when that split occurred, but the UA BoT knew that the football shutdown was coming and scotched it. The AD was not allowed to apply to join the new conference. Just something else we owe those SOB's in Tuscaloosa for.

https://www.bizjournals.com/bizjour...lleges-look-at-thrifty-scheduling-models.html

"The AAC, Conference USA and Sun Belt, all with far-reaching memberships that span the Mid-Atlantic across to Texas, are deep into discussions about ways to conduct their championships and regular seasons more efficiently. Most changes would not affect football or basketball, but they would target all other sports.

“I grew up in a time when conferences were regionally based,” AAC Commissioner Mike Aresco said. “But that’s not the case anymore, so we’ve got to look at doing things differently.”

Aresco’s league is focused on creating a more efficient regular season rather than restructuring the postseason. The American’s schools are studying a new model for sports outside of football and basketball that would enable AAC members to schedule in-season games on their own, as if they were operating as independents.

There would be no regular-season AAC games unless schools specifically arranged them, which they would be free to do. The freedom would allow schools to craft a more regionally friendly slate, cutting travel expenses.

The AAC still would conduct postseason tournaments to crown a champion. "

 

Power ratings like the RPI or the NET? Only thing I can come up with.

 

One thing that most conferences should truncate or eliminate -- the SEC excepted -- is the conference baseball tournament.
The ACC's format, for example, guarantees that there are games each year in which one or both teams must take the field having been eliminated from title eligibility. Cut the thing down to four or six teams. Save arms.

One-bid leagues will have to do this, too. If the MAC can whack tournaments altogether and reduce the basketball championships from 12 teams to eight, it will need to consider slimming baseball.

 

G5 could do a combined tournament for diamond and Olympic sports. I'm leery of a slippery slope to "Y'all should have your own football championship, too" though.

 

I mean, the whole point for the small conferences is to send your best team to the NCAA tournament in every sport. You're actively working against that with a full league tournament. Especially in baseball, you end up getting to the point where people who have hardly pitched all season are deciding auto bids because your supply of arms are just exhausted by the time you get to the final game.

You play an entire season, and it's pretty clear that your eighth-place team has no business getting the opportunity to play for the NCAA tournament. They had their chance over the course of the year. I can get behind four teams. A lot of times the top four can be bunched pretty close to each other. But in the case of someone like the Ivy League, I still don't get it. You just finished a full double home and a way round robin. Why the tournament? If the top two teams are tied and split the regular season, set up a championship game (I think they used to do this, actually). There will be obvious outliers (top three teams tied and went 1-1 against each other), but that's going to be pretty rare when you play a 14-game schedule.

 

It looks like they won't get rid of scrums altogether but these are still some pretty big changes.

World Rugby approves 10 temporary law trials to reduce Covid risk, including scrum changes and use of orange card

 

Protective Life Stadium to have turf with sod option

I'm going to throw this link into this thread as it is something of an oddball. Do any of you have experience with the use of this kind of turf? I know what they're going for, as Birmingham has hosted a couple of games with the Men's and Women's National Soccer teams, and they come very close to outright requiring grass fields. I'm completely unfamiliar with it.

The other thing of interest is the local economic note thrown in at the bottom. These are the downtown hotels directly adjacent to the B'ham - Jefferson Civic Center, the convention and exhibition hall.


"In other business, the hotels owned by the BJCC -- the Sheraton Birmingham Hotel and the Westin Birmingham -- have been severely impacted by COVID-19 with the hotels operating at a nearly $500,000 loss last month combined, the board reported.

The Sheraton, where there are no occupied rooms, lost $195,000 in April and only generated a little more than $8,100 in revenue.

The Westin, which had a 29.1 percent occupancy rate, lost $289,000 in April and had $216,000 in revenue against a $1.26 million budget."