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Date Posted: 15:33:27 04/25/03 Fri
Author: statefan
Subject: MAAC and AE

The conversation earlier this week comparing the MAAC to the AE reminded me of a question I always meant to pose. Has the AE ever participated in one of those one league against another challenges, similar to the ACC-Big Ten Challenge?, and if so, what were the positives and negatives.

Since most AE schools already play 4 or 5 games against Patriot and NEC opponents, and generally 1 game against a MAAC opponent, it would seem a MAAC - AE challenge would be interesting. Both leagues now have ten teams. There are several geographical areas with teams from both leagues where doubleheaders might draw substantial fan interest, namely the Albany area (Albany and Siena) the southern Connecticut area (Hartford and Fairfield), the Baltimore area (UMBC and Loyola) and the NYC area (Stony Brook and Manhattan or Iona). Usually, to make these games competative they are matched up based on the prior year's league standings, so that for example you might have a double-header in Albany of Maine at Siena and Canisus at Albany. This would draw in excess of 10,000 people with both home teams fan bases, plus whatever the visiting teams would bring. It would probably result in each league's fans rooting for its league reprsentatives, in other words, in my example, the Albany fans rooting for Maine and the Siena fans rooting for Canisus.

Further, I would guess that with 18 league games to play now, we will go to a format like the MAAC's where at least two league games are played before Christmas. So, this could be worked into a two game trip, for example, whoever was going to Baltimore to play Loyola, would play a league game against UMBC two nights later.

Sure, there are some problems that come to mind, like why would the MAAC want to play lower RPI teams (although using the Pomeroy numbers, the average margin of predicted difference, not accounting for home court advantage, would be between 2 and 3), and if it was a multi year format, it would not be fair for Albany, Hartford, Stony Brook and UMBC to always get home games while teams that don't have a MAAC school in their backyard always get road games.

Anyway, just wondering everyone's thoughts. Personally, I have no strong feeling re: Commisioner Monasch's job performance, although I admit, I find the newspaper stuff comical, but my feeling is that the Commissioner's job is to be creative and try to make something like this a reality. I really don't think kudos are in order for bringing in UMBC, a school that wanted addmission anyway. I would be much more supportive of the league office if they pursued a creative project, rathar than just kept doing the same. It doesn't have to be this project; just something which enhances the visibility of the league and its members.

By the way, unfortunately, my prediction of the results would be MAAC 8 - AE 2.

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