Reply to thread

Message

[QUOTE="Waltdods, post: 2247673, member: 2932"]
There's a pretty interesting history here.

Both the rise and fall of the Great Alaska Shootout are more or less direct results of NCAA rules.  Both it and Maui developed out of NCAA rules designed to encourage schools to travel to play schools outside the mainland U.S. Originally, these games were exempt - they didn't count against the maximum number of games a team could play.  These exempt games over time expanded from Alaska/Maui to a dozen or so other tournaments, but they were tightly limited.  In the late 90s, the NCAA adopted a rule barring a school from playing in an exempt tournament more than twice every four years.  The complex rules around exempt tournaments were challenged in court, and eventually significantly revised starting in 2006.  The 2006 amendments majorly relaxed what a tournament needed to do to get teams relief from the number of games limitation.  This led to the creation of all sorts of tournaments that aren't really tournaments (where the big-time schools advance even if they lose).  It's a heck of a lot easier for a team to travel to the Barclays Center than Anchorage, so that's what teams are doing.

(You probably don't see the quality dipping for a couple years because teams were committed before the rules change and it took a bit of time for the new market to shake out.)
[/QUOTE]

Verification

What is a Syracuse fan's favorite color?