Really good segment after the Duke discussion at 11:35 Doug discussed mid major scheduling. Listening to coaches all summer talk about scheduling I feel for any of these coaches that are struggling to schedule. Fascinating discussion. The NIL portion to start is decent but the scheduling part is so true.

I get the desire to play P5's, but I've always wondered why top mid-majors just don't play each other to boost quad wins.

If I'm a mid-major, I feel like I can build a solid non-conference with the likes of High Point, McNeese, Liberty, Belmont, etc. on H/H's without having to beg a P5 for a road game. Give me a full non-conference with the Top 3-5 in MVC, SoCon, Southland, ASUN, and CUSA.

Also more fun to watch than getting thrashed on the road.

I didn't see the interview but can't mids play in Thankgiving or Xmas tourneys with a chance to play "big" teams?

The 2025 Battle 4 Atlantis had mids (Colorado State, Wichita St., WKU, VCU) as well as St. Mary's, Vandy, Virginia Tech. And USF, sort of big mid.

Why didn't fiami or SF Austin or Belmont play in a tourney like that? Maybe because they would rather cry about not getting to play big teams than actually play them. Coach Painter (Purdue) called BS the other day on mids crying and b!thing and moaning about not getting to play up.

Painter, a former mid-major coach himself (Southern Illinois), argued Purdue plays multiple mid-majors annually (e.g., Akron, Kent State) to balance strength of schedule and NCAA tournament seeding.

Well, fiami got to play an SEC team on a neutral court and we all saw what happened. Congrats fiami, you asked for it.

Boise State is taking a similar approach in football and something I'm hoping to see more of at that level. Like most everyone else they will have a money game on the road, but they're also going out of their way to schedule 1/1s with Memphis, USF, App State, Marshall, Cincinnati and Houston.

I much prefer that. I think we've done a good job in recent years with a few H/H's like Illinois State, Delaware, and Belmont. I wish we'd stack that more x4-5. If we can travel to St. Mary's, let's head south to some of those schools.

a mid major wont always get thrashed aginst a p5 team. playing a strong team like duke or michigan state is still good though. the coach could then talk to that coach and get valuable advice on how to better utilize players . certainly a coach like tom izzo would have a lot of knowledge about development of players

Tom Izzy is coaching talent, at that level it’s about getting the talent. You can do a lot of shit with talent. If it was about their skills to develop they would take players not 4-5stars.

With conferences only playing about 10 nonconference games, P5s playing several of their OOC games against other P5s, and mids outnumbering high-majors by several fold, there are probably well less that two power 5 games available per mid on average. Unless these end up nearly evenly distributed it is a certainly that many mids will end up playing none.

I heard Seth Greenberg not believe that Miami couldn't get a P5 game. I was thinking he is stuck in an era of 14 or 16 conference games and 290 D1 teams and can't do math.

To me playing a P5 CAN'T be and never should have been a requirement for at at large bid. Your schedule strength should matter a lot but the only question should be how many games should a bubble team (#46 or so) win against your schedule.