I believe we will still play 11 OOC games next season.
Some are already spoken for.
We will play Georgetown at the JMA Dome.
We will play an SEC team in the ACC-SEC Challenge on the road.
We will play two games in Brooklyn in the Legends Classic on November 21st and November 22nd.
It sounds like it is being planned for Thanksgiving weekend, so our commitment to the Legends Classic does not present a date conflict (assuming they do play on Thanksgiving weekend).
With an 8 team field, I am assuming the format will be like the Maui Classic, where each team is guaranteed 3 games.
If we were to also commit to the NIL tournament, it would mean we have committed to play 7 of our 11 OOC games, and only one of them is at home. Our home games are lucrative; we make a lot of money playing there. Even if we played the remaining 4 games all at home, it would mean we only play 5 of our 11 OOC games at home in 2024-25, which is really low.
We only played 6 home OOC games in 2023-24 but it was an unusual schedule in that we played Georgetown on the road and had that one off game with Oregon in South Dakota, along with 3 games in the Maui Classic.
We usually play 1 game OOC on the road. Either Georgetown or the challenge game, which tends to bounce from home to away year after year. And then we usually play a 2 game tournament in NYC, like we are doing again in 2024-25. So we usually have 3 OOC games away from home and 8 at home.
Bottom line, I think it is unlikely we are playing in this NIL thing in November 2024. If they expand it to 16 teams and plan to have everyone play 4 games (that is asking a ton for programs that have strong home attendance), it is probably a long shot we commit to it in November of 2025.
Let's see what happens.