So the Athletic had an article today based on creating mini-bubbles with 8 team pods staying and playing, a round robin schedule between Thanksgiving and the return of classes after Christmas break. Of course there is a Chicago pod....and here is LUs
Chicago State, DePaul, Eastern Illinois, Illinois, Illinois-Chicago, Loyola, Notre Dame, Western Michigan.......
Bradley. Illinois St and Indiana State are in Milwaukee, SIU is in Louisville with Indiana

Interesting but probably not a chance......They sell this as a non-conference schedule..leaving room for a conference schedule later.......but maybe this is what we will see....a MVC bubble in St. Louis with mandatory health precautions.

So how would we do in our bubble?

The Alabama round robin could be called The Tide Pod Challenge.

I was thinking about a similar thing. It would make sense to bag the travel and try to play locally as much as possible. You can get some games in, and then hope for a real conference season starting in January or February.

Maybe you could get away with the MTE if you build in an off week around it.

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MBB Scholarship Chart

Under this proposal would the games be played at a single neutral site?

Where is Northwestern placed?

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Let's go Braden!

Just pull the plug on the season.

I hope nobody gave you a Power of Attorney for Health Care!

That’s funny. It is!! Honestly any talk of playing is just wishcasting at this point.

When I look at college football, it’s abundantly clear that the NCAA had absolutely no plan and was just hoping that everything would go away by the time the season started. That was a massive mistake, and I just want them to to formulate some plan for basketball so we don’t have a repeat.

My suggestion is this:

Two regular season conference “rounds “and an NCAA tournament.

There are 32 division 1 conferences for college basketball. Make every game count and crown a true champion after 3 rounds - “conference round 1,” “conference round 2,” and “NCAA tournament.”

CONFERENCE ROUND 1 - 3 weeks, 5 games.

Week 1 - every player tests at school - if negative - they enter the “quarantine dorm.” Players are either in dorm or practice facility. Classes for players are live-streamed.

Week 2 - same thing.

Week 3 - Thanksgiving Break Week - players tested final time. If negative - player allowed to board charter plane/bus to neutral conference site. All conference teams play 5 games in five days. Teams are restricted to their hotel floor or the basketball court.

CONFERENCE ROUND 2 - 3 weeks, 5 games.

Week 1 - every player tests at school - if negative - they enter the “quarantine dorm.” Players are either in dorm or practice facility. Classes for players are live-streamed.

Week 2 - same thing.

Week 3 - Christmas Break - players tested final time. If negative - player is allowed to board charter plane/bus to neutral conference site. For us - play it in St. Louis - call it “Arch Madness.” All conference teams play 5 games in five days. Teams are restricted to their hotel floor or the basketball court.

NCAA TOURNAMENT

64 teams - top two teams from every conference - two best records go and tiebreakers = total points scored in 10 games. Seed 64 teams same as always (but no “at-large” teams).

Week 1 - every player tests at school - if negative - they enter the “quarantine dorm.” Players are either in dorm or practice facility. Classes for players are live-streamed.

Week 2 - same thing.

Week 3 - Spring Break Week - players tested final time. If negative - player allowed to board charter plane to neutral NCAA site.

2 sites - Disney Wide World of Sports and Vegas.

Day 1 through 4 -4 games in 4 days. Players restricted to bubble sites.

Day 5 - travel day for final four teams.

Days 6 and 7 - Final four at a neutral location


I would rather have a definitive plan and just keep things up in the air. I don’t care if we get 10 regular season games or 30 – I just want to have college basketball.

There's a lot of merit to your proposal Toledo, but one fatal flaw.

Under your scheme conferences such as the MEAC, Southland, Ohio Valley, SWAC and Big South would have the same number of teams qualify for the NCAA Tournament as the Big Ten, ACC, Big East, SEC and Pac 12.

That is a total nonstarter. I understand the logic of it given that there would be no nonconference games to create a database to rank teams for purposes of at-large bids, but CBS and the P5 conferences would never allow a system whereby a North Carolina Central or a Prairie View A&M would be in the tourney while a Michigan State or a Duke would be out.
You may also have been seduced by the happy coincidence that there are exactly 32 D1 conferences.

One possible tweak would be to somehow pre-allocate bids among conference based on some historical or statistical formula. Under this scheme the Big Ten might be guaranteed, say, 6 bids, while the MEAC would be limited to 1. You could reserve a few bids until the end to account for special cases.