The National Collegiate Athletic Association is an ever-changing landscape. It recently changed last year when the Pac-12 Conference got dismantled and conferences became less regional.
Conferences have been becoming less based on regions for years, but it came to a head this past year. With the Pac-12 gone, the teams on the West Coast had to go somewhere.
With that, teams in the East have to now play teams on the other side of the country, which is not right for multiple reasons.
One of the reasons is that smaller schools and sports will have to travel cross country more frequently which is harder to do with less resources.
As teams are changing conferences, some schools will not play a conference schedule but will still participate in the conference tournament.
This happened in the Ohio Valley Conference with women’s tennis.
Bryant University became a new member of the conference in women’s tennis. However, this year, they only participated in the conference tournament and not the conference schedule.
Bryant got given the three seed in the tournament without ever playing a conference game. Every other team had to play every team in the conference before the tournament.
The NCAA has conference schedules so teams can play against other teams of similar level and know what teams are doing better than others heading into the conference tournament.
Bryant, not playing a conference game, gave teams no chance to prepare for them as no team in the conference faced them already.
With that, how is the conference supposed to seed the tournament with a team that does not have a conference record?
Bryant was seeded at the three seed, but why?
It could be based just off the overall record, but Bryant had a worse record than three other teams in the OVC: Western Illinois, Southeast Missouri State and Southern Illinois University Edwardsville.
As well as with overall records, teams can play harder non-conference schedules and then the records are skewed.
Either way, Bryant was the third seed and Eastern had to play them in the first round of the tournament. Eastern did not have many ways to prepare as the Panthers have not faced the Bulldogs before.
Additionally, film is difficult to get for tennis teams as most teams do not film their games.
Eastern ended up getting swept by Bryant, and Bryant went on to win the OVC tournament.
Without playing a conference game throughout the tournament, Bryant was able to win the conference tournament.
That does not seem fair.
Bryant is also located in Rhode Island. Next year, when Bryant is a full member and does participate in the conference tournament, teams from the Midwest will have to travel to Rhode Island to play Bryant and vice versa.
Tennis programs do not get a lot of money, and the teams will most likely be traveling by bus. From Charleston to Bryant University, it’s a 15-hour car ride.
Eastern will have to make that trip for just one game in its conference schedule.
Teams in other conferences are having to do even longer rides as well. In the BIG 10 men’s tennis, Penn State had to travel all the way to Oregon to just play one conference game.
For football and basketball, travel like that isn’t too hard as teams take planes. But for smaller sports like tennis, teams do not always have the funds to travel by plane to every conference game.
Conferences used to be about where you were located so students would not have to lose days of school to travel across the country.
Conferences should go back to how they were.
Region-based conferences make sure schools are not jumping around between conferences, preventing what happened in OVC women’s tennis as well as not making schools travel for days just to play one game.
Patrick Schmitz can be reached at 581-2812 or at pfschmitz@eiu.edu.
