Espn just can't help themselves | Page 3 | Syracusefan.com

Espn just can't help themselves

Then it's no different than KU and KC. They schedule games there all the time.

Don't know about the specifics, but they do play Oregon State there this year (it was last night, I think) as a home game. Pretty sure that's part of the season ticket package. If so, yes, that's just like what Villanova does.

They also played in a pre-Thanksgiving tournament in Kansas City this season. Like our 2008 game out there. Not like what Nova does.
 
As someone here implied, do we want to be compared with the big boys (Dukes, UNCs, etc...)? Then one way to change the discussion is by scheduling like they do.


I'd rather be compared with the big boys for our results in late March early April, then how we scheduled in November/December.

Temple was long thought to be the leader in playing anyone anywhere, but so what? What exactly did that get them? I guess it balanced what was usually a weak A-10 schedule. In some ways Duke and UNC might need to up their schedules because of how weak the middle and bottom of the ACC have been in recent years. This is not a problem that SU faces.
 
I'd rather be compared with the big boys for our results in late March early April, then how we scheduled in November/December.

Temple was long thought to be the leader in playing anyone anywhere, but so what? What exactly did that get them? I guess it balanced what was usually a weak A-10 schedule. In some ways Duke and UNC might need to up their schedules because of how weak the middle and bottom of the ACC have been in recent years. This is not a problem that SU faces.

no argument there.
 
Sportscenter highlights were literally 10 seconds long and they still found time to squeeze in "syracuse with a rare trip out of new york." Its comical at this point

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Ever think that maybe it's some inter-office ball busting going on?
 
Who cares?

We've played 5 true out of conference road games out of NY in the last decade. FACT.

Yes SDSU was out west (on an aircraft carrier, if it was in their gym crowd would have been more of a factor IMO)
Yes Kansas was in KC (still not their home gym)
Yes Florida was in Florda (see above)

Think about this. If Michigan State played Syracuse in Albany, would the atmosphere be the same as the Dome? No. It's a neutral site game (obviously in our favor, but nevertheless neutral).

Logistics? Yes. Facts? Yes.

We win though, that's all that matters.
 
Don't know about the specifics, but they do play Oregon State there this year (it was last night, I think) as a home game. Pretty sure that's part of the season ticket package. If so, yes, that's just like what Villanova does.

They also played in a pre-Thanksgiving tournament in Kansas City this season. Like our 2008 game out there. Not like what Nova does.

The key determinants imo are the regularity with which a team plays at a venue and the allocation of tickets. I would place proximity/sleeping in one's bed in third.

If Kansas is determining who sits where in the game vs. Oregon State, then I can see an argument that its a true road game for the Beavers. I highly doubt KU has that privilege w/ regard to the pre-season tourney, which also had St. Louis in the field.

The SDSU game, on the other hand, met neither criterion. They never play there, and tickets were equally allocated. Not to mention that, in hindsight, it was about as hostile as a Taylor Swift concert.
 
The key determinants imo are the regularity with which a team plays at a venue and the allocation of tickets. I would place proximity/sleeping in one's bed in third.

If Kansas is determining who sits where in the game vs. Oregon State, then I can see an argument that its a true road game for the Beavers. I highly doubt KU has that privilege w/ regard to the pre-season tourney, which also had St. Louis in the field.

The SDSU game, on the other hand, met neither criterion. They never play there, and tickets were equally allocated. Not to mention that, in hindsight, it was about as hostile as a Taylor Swift concert.

The sleeping in one's bed thing is so far back. If that's a criterion, then Syracuse hasn't played a home game since probably 1985.

I do, by the way, agree with all of what you said.
 
As someone here implied, do we want to be compared with the big boys (Dukes, UNCs, etc...)? Then one way to change the discussion is by scheduling like they do.
How about the big boys want to be compared to SU? Please note UK is now abandoning going to these small little gyms. They are realizing that the truly big boys are a big draw. They can get more alumni, fans, and money from playing marquee names at big neutral arenas.

If you are not too concerned about the small drop in RPI, the environment of the large neutral site actually replicates the early rounds of the NCAAT better.

UK, probably at the second biggest program, is adopting the SU model. It doesn't make sense for a team with the following of SU (and now maybe UK) to play an away OOC game in a small gym.
 
Last nights graphic was 100% fact. Don't know what everyone is upset about. It's true that we play fewer non-con true road games than probably most if not every top program.



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Last nights graphic was 100% fact. Don't know what everyone is upset about. It's true that we play fewer non-con true road games than probably most if not every top program.



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your second sentence is interesting...BUT THAT WASN'T THE GRAPHIC! Their graphic used less than clear/complete info to give an impression to a base that doesn't know any better. if you want to present the idea that we don't travel enough, fine...but they cherrypicked the pieces that made their story.
 
My only interest here is consistency. I have no problem with ESPN (or anyone else) calling MSG a home venue for SU, so long as they do the same thing with Kansas and the Sprint Center (or Kemper Arena before that). If Michigan State plays anywhere in the Detroit area, it's the same thing. Or Duke in the state of North Carolina. We can split hairs on Florida playing in Tampa, but that's on their fan base more than anything else.

As for playing in San Diego, even though it was just as foreign for SDS to play on an aircraft carrier, they didn't have to board an airplane to get there. They were in the friendly confines of their own city, so when the game was postponed they were not inconvenienced.
 
your second sentence is interesting...BUT THAT WASN'T THE GRAPHIC! Their graphic used less than clear/complete info to give an impression to a base that doesn't know any better. if you want to present the idea that we don't travel enough, fine...but they cherrypicked the pieces that made their story.

Welcome to journalism in the 21st century my friend.
 
As someone here implied, do we want to be compared with the big boys (Dukes, UNCs, etc...)? Then one way to change the discussion is by scheduling like they do.

Does anyone bother to look at Duke's schedule before making this argument?
 
your second sentence is interesting...BUT THAT WASN'T THE GRAPHIC! Their graphic used less than clear/complete info to give an impression to a base that doesn't know any better. if you want to present the idea that we don't travel enough, fine...but they cherrypicked the pieces that made their story.

That's not cherrypicking; road games make up the great majority of games to which a team travels.
 
Last nights graphic was 100% fact. Don't know what everyone is upset about. It's true that we play fewer non-con true road games than probably most if not every top program.



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Two things:

First, I'm not sure it's 100% fact, SWC showed 7 away games.

Second, you state the conclusion they were trying to portray, that we play probably play fewer road games than most if not every top program. They could have researched that and shown the discrepancy but they chose not to. They didn't want to put it in context of the other programs. They did this same type of shoddy proclamation they did previously with the in-the-State stuff. I am starting to find it to be annoying when you start to think it's not by accident.
 
If you have to intentionally muddy the water s by bringing up MSG, the Verizon Center, or one semi-hostile arena game from four years ago to make your point, you are probably on the losing side.
 
Two things:

First, I'm not sure it's 100% fact, SWC showed 7 away games.

Second, you state the conclusion they were trying to portray, that we play probably play fewer road games than most if not every top program. They could have researched that and shown the discrepancy but they chose not to. They didn't want to put it in context of the other programs. They did this same type of shoddy proclamation they did previously with the in-the-State stuff. I am starting to find it to be annoying when you start to think it's not by accident.

On the first point, SWC's count was off by one. The 2003-2004 game against St. Bonaventure wasn't a road game. It was played at the hockey arena in Rochester, I think. Or maybe in Buffalo. Six road games since '03-'04 - does that jibe with what ESPN showed? And is that the same time-frame?

Second, we don't know what impression they were trying to give. Considering that they ran a graphic purporting to show the true road games we've played since X date, it's safe to assume they were concluding that we have, in fact, played Y number of road games since X date.
 
I went through Duke's schedule pretty fast, so this might not be 100% accurate, but in the same time span they've only scheduled one true road game that wasn't part of the Big 10/ACC Challenge and that was against Michigan. They have done several unbalanced home-and-homes with St. John's and Temple, where Duke's home games are at Cameron and St. John's/Temple's are at a larger, off-campus venue. (ESPN wouldn't count those as true road games for SU.)
 
I went through Duke's schedule pretty fast, so this might not be 100% accurate, but in the same time span they've only scheduled one true road game that wasn't part of the Big 10/ACC Challenge and that was against Michigan. They have done several unbalanced home-and-homes with St. John's and Temple, where Duke's home games are at Cameron and St. John's/Temple's are at a larger, off-campus venue. (ESPN wouldn't count those as true road games for SU.)

Anybody versus St. John's at the Garden is playing a true road game. And that includes our February game down there last year. They've played half their games there for decades.

Duke's been on that neutral-site kick for awhile now; they're pretty similar to SU in that regard. They're a reliable draw for games at the Meadowlands and the Garden. If they've really played that few road games, well, that's surprising. (It's got nothing to do with any text ESPN runs during a Syracuse broadcast, but it is interesting.)
 
Most of all it's just lazy on the part of ESPN and its announcers. Lazy just like a good portion of the media. Interested in the catchy headline instead of the story and context.
 
your second sentence is interesting...BUT THAT WASN'T THE GRAPHIC! Their graphic used less than clear/complete info to give an impression to a base that doesn't know any better. if you want to present the idea that we don't travel enough, fine...but they cherrypicked the pieces that made their story.

What was the graphic?

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OK, I can't dispute that. 50% is significant.

Still think the graphic was fair - technically accurate regarding road games and still not misleading if it is intended to convey the larger theme that Syracuse travels infrequently out of conference.

Too many on here are reading their repetition of the "few road games" theme as a value judgment, and a negative one at that. I don't know if it is, but that's neither here nor there. Syracuse does not, in fact, travel out of conference with any frequency. That is the Boeheim and Syracuse University policy of the past decade. Rationalize the policy, fine. But let's not all pretend it doesn't exist. SWC nicely listed all regular-season non-conference trips for Syracuse in the past decade in another thread. Difficult to argue with numbers. Syracuse does not travel very often before Big East play starts.


I don't agree with your assessment / observation. Seems to me that the "policy" is to play in high profile preseason tournaments, which gets the program quality matchups, just not true road games or traditional home-and-away matchups.

I do miss the days when we used to play a marquee OOC matchup in the final third of the season. That ended in the early 2000s, when we started having to play more conference games to compensate for our bloated conference.
 
I don't agree with your assessment / observation. Seems to me that the "policy" is to play in high profile preseason tournaments, which gets the program quality matchups, just not true road games or traditional home-and-away matchups.

I do miss the days when we used to play a marquee OOC matchup in the final third of the season. That ended in the early 2000s, when we started having to play more conference games to compensate for our bloated conference.

Yeah, we wrapped that up with the Missouri and Michigan State home-and-homes. Miss those.

Anyway, I think we've always played in high-profile preseason tournaments. Those haven't replaced our non-conference games against name schools. It's only after football bowl revenue disappeared and the Big East schedule went back to 18 games that we abandoned our tradition of seeking two home-and-home deals.
 
I went through Duke's schedule pretty fast, so this might not be 100% accurate, but in the same time span they've only scheduled one true road game that wasn't part of the Big 10/ACC Challenge and that was against Michigan. They have done several unbalanced home-and-homes with St. John's and Temple, where Duke's home games are at Cameron and St. John's/Temple's are at a larger, off-campus venue. (ESPN wouldn't count those as true road games for SU.)

Decided to make it a Duke half-hour and watch the remainder of the Delaware game while looking at their past ten schedules.

a.) There are a few road games on there, though they have gone whole seasons without any non-conference road games.

b.) They play a TON of neutral-site games.

c.) Kind of bitter that they've been to Maui twice in five years and we haven't been since 1998.

Regarding (a): In 2005, 2007, 2008, and this year, Duke did not play (or will not play) any road games outside of the ACC. In the other years since 2003-2004 they've played at: Michigan State, Georgetown (three times), Indiana, UNC Greensboro, Purdue, Michigan, St. John's (twice), Wisconsin, and Ohio State. That's thirteen games. At least one of those Big Ten games was not part of the challenge (they played at Purdue and Michigan in a five-day span in 2009).

On (b), they play neutral-site games all over the map. Alaska, Chicago (Valparaiso, Iowa State), Portland (Oregon), Meadowlands, Charlotte (Davidson), MSG, Kansas City, Bahamas, Atlanta (Kentucky), Philadelphia (Temple).

On (c), I don't like Duke.
 
I say let's table this discussion until next year or two. Because in reviewing Duke's OOC schedule for the past decade (rather quickly like Alcas did), here are their true road games -

ACC/Big Ten Challenge opponent every other year
St. John's at MSG
Georgetown at Verizon
Temple at Wells Fargo

Which is precisely how I see our OOC schedule developing while in the ACC. Although we may mix it up with Temple and Nova.

Any bets now that if the above does occur, we still have the ESPN pundits lamenting the fact that we don't schedule "true" road games? ;)

Cheers,
Neil
 

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