2014 Big South Meetings Recap
The Big South posted a recap of their conference meetings in Hilton Head, South Carolina today. First of all, I have to give props to the conference in terms of listening to the fans. I may be the conference’s harshest critic and have pushed for the conference to strive for innovation, especially in men’s basketball, to help get better television opportunities, like the Atlantic Sun, and better officiating. The Big South seemed to listen and has made some great changes for the upcoming seasons.
Men’s Basketball Scheduling:
- The Conference will explore scheduling games on Tuesday and Friday during two weeks of the Conference season in 2014–15 only. This will allow the Conference to evaluate television opportunities and availability of top tier officials. (Where have I heard this before?)
- With 11 men’s basketball programs, the Conference will play an unbalanced 18-game League schedule in 2014–15. The top five teams will receive a bye in the First Round of the 2015 VisitMyrtleBeach.com Basketball Championship.
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Big South Network:
- The Conference will provide member institutions with upgrades in audio communications and graphics equipment for streaming events. In addition, increased minimum production standards for football, men’s and women’s basketball and Conference Championships were approved and shall be met no later than the 2017–18 academic year. (cough Presbyterian!)
Television/ESPN:
- A minimum of 60 exclusive broadcasts on the ESPN family of networks are tentatively scheduled for 2014–15.
The only thing that I was disappointed not to see was a push to better the conference’s basketball RPI as a whole via scheduling rules and also a cap on non-Division I games. I guess you can’t have everything…
In another bit of good news, Longwood’s own Michelle Meadows was elected Chair of the Big South Council of Senior Woman Administrators for 2014–16.
