(Inside Lacrosse Photo: Zach Babo)

Two things about how, when and why I share my opinions: 1. I don’t like to provide solutions for problems that aren’t actually problems and 2. I don’t like calling out problems without offering solutions.

I think the number of DI games played in February and the negative trend of attendance at the NCAA Championship Weekend are problems, and their solutions are linked. As opposed to tackling the problems chronologically, examine them from a cause/effect and priority order.

Related

Among other topics, IL Publisher Terry Foy outlined his plan for adjusting the NCAA DI Men's Lacrosse calendar with Paul Carcaterra and Paul Rabil on the SiriusXM Lacrosse Show last month.

A Championship the Second Week of June

Championship Weekend is a complicated issue. I don't feel as strongly that something must be changed as I do about playing fewer February games, but I think this plan is an improvement.

It starts with the premise that it’s no longer essential that Memorial Day be intertwined with the title game. Watching the coaches’ thoughts video, there’s a clear understanding of lacrosse’s unique history and attachment to the American Armed Forces and the importance of honoring that connection, which is why it’d be important to honor lacrosse’s military heritage on Memorial Day in other ways.

My plan utilizes the national holiday as an opportunity to play more games, as opposed to spotlighting the highest profile contest.

The first round of the NCAA Tournament should begin at noon on the Friday before Memorial Day in the home venue of a top four seed. That venue should host another first round matchup at 2:30. Another venue should host its first first round matchup at 5:30, then a second at 8 pm. The same pattern should be repeated on Saturday. Then, the noon/2:30 venue should host a Quarterfinal matchup at noon on Sunday, the second Quarterfinal should be at 2:30 Sunday, then the pattern repeated on Monday. Four venues hosting three games over the course of three days; the Tournament field moving from 16 to four in four days.

The Semifinals should be played as a double-header the subsequent Thursday, Saturday or Sunday (the first weekend in June) at a roughly 30,000-seat venue like Army or Navy (which are not currently available for NCAA Championship Weekend because of graduation), and then the championship should be played in primetime the following Thursday, Saturday or Sunday (the second in June) at a 20,000-seat venue like Red Bull Arena or Talen Energy Stadium.

This plan doesn’t only address stadium attendance; it creates opportunity for improved windows for TV. In 2010, the NCAA experimented with the Semifinal and Championship start times to shine a brighter spotlight on the game broadcasts. Simply put, holiday weekends — especially during the day — tend to get poorer ratings than weeknights. Airing at 1 p.m. on Monday, May 30, on ESPN2, the 2016 NCAA championship game drew 476,000 viewers. The proposed Thursday for the championship, the NCAA Outdoor Track and Field championships drew 670,000 viewers. The day prior, the College Softball World Series drew 1,476,000 viewers.

This plan means that Selection Sunday would be the current Quarterfinal Weekend (a.k.a. Preakness Weekend), so by extension the majority of conference tournaments would be played that weekend, with a few being played the week prior (Mother’s Day weekend). That means that every team — especially the very far north MAAC, NEC and America East teams that don't qualify for their league tournaments — still get to play a game in beautiful May weather, which is currently not the case. Consider Canisius.1

The most frequently cited problem with this plan is the additional costs each athletic department will incur by housing athletes on campus for an extended period. I find this reason to be a red herring — not because housing players isn’t expensive (see my estimates below)2 — but because such a vast majority of schools (roughly every school that doesn’t qualify for the NCAA Tournament) won’t have to keep students past the end of its academic calendar (on average, finals typically end the first week in May). That, coupled with how willing university athletic departments are to house fall sport athletes in August and winter sport athletes over the break between semesters, leads me to believe the expense issue would not or should not disqualify an otherwise good plan.

The second-most frequently cited pitfall is separating the championships from DII and DIII. I believe that this plan would indeed separate DI from the DII and DIII the championship games; that said, there’s no reason that the NCAA couldn’t host the DII and/or DIII championship games at a geographically appropriate site that was hosting DI NCAA First Round and Quarterfinal games. That addition would accomplish DII and DIII much of what would be accomplished for DI via this plan (specifically, right-sizing the championship game venue while adhering to the spirit of the sport's past).

A Universal Start Date

But shifting the back of the calendar shouldn't be done without addressing the front of the calendar — that'd be a horrible missed opportunity.

This chart clearly depicts the march toward early February over the five seasons prior to last spring. First, consider why this has happened. Between 2011 and 2015, nine programs made their debut (Mercer, High Point, Marquette, Furman, Richmond, Boston U., Monmouth, NJIT and UMass Lowell) and one dropped DI men’s lacrosse (Presbyterian). Four of those programs helped the sport’s Southern expansion considerably. Those programs, quite justifiably, utilized their geographic advantage for better weather in early spring to schedule home games they might not otherwise be able to play. In pursuit of competitive balance, the trend crept northward.

Concurrently, conferences realigned. The Big Ten was created, and the league reserved the last five weekends of the season for conference games. The Patriot League expanded to nine teams and league play begins in February in order to accommodate eight contests. The connection between coaches’ job security and qualifying for conference and the NCAA Tournaments increased, emphasizing those April games. As a result, coaches grew less open to scheduling mid-weeks games. In order to preserve traditional rivalries — especially in the Mid-Atlantic with games like Maryland-Navy, Johns Hopkins-Navy, Johns Hopkins-Loyola, Towson-Loyola (Syracuse is a notable exception as they played local rivals Hobart, Cornell and Binghamton mid-week) — moved to February.

We saw a significant decline in attendance, if not overall interest, no better demonstrated than last season's Johns Hopkins-Navy game. That showdown — played on 35-degree Tuesday, Feb. 9, night — featured 665 fans in the stands, down from 8,655 when Navy hosted Johns Hopkins two years prior. However, 20,624 fans streamed the game via the Patriot League Network. It was the second day of the season with a game, and the first chance to see potential national championship contender-level teams as the first top 20 matchup of the season.

There was also a large number of games rescheduled, which oddly reverted some of the games to their more natural spot on the calendar. When games weren’t rescheduled, treacherous travel was a common occurrence. While the attention paid to Navy’s web stream of their Hopkins game and Hampton’s debut were positive early February stories, coaches have said that, overall, interest on-campus doesn’t shoot up until after the men’s basketball season is over, which is generally the first or second weekend in March.

I think an official start date for DI men’s lacrosse practices and games is in order. I think a good solution is that practice should be allowed to begin the third Tuesday in January (the day after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s observance) and games should be allowed to begin the third Thursday in February (30 days later), with an idea that most teams would play their first game that Saturday.

Additionally, I think the window of minimum and maximum scheduled contest dates — currently a range of 12 to 17 — should be redefined to separate scrimmages and games. The maximum number of scrimmages should be three competition days in the fall and spring, combined. The number of scheduled games — meaning games at least 14 games played and limiting to 16).

Both of these suggestions cast an eye toward competitive balance (keeping the Ivy League’s additional rules in mind), promoting mid-week games (keeping more geographically far-flung programs in mind) and moving matchups that appeal to fans in the stands and TV audiences later into the season.

Feasibility

Could this plan be accomplished?3

The vast majority of NCAA DI football teams appear to start practice between Aug. 1-5, and the first game is played the Thursday prior to Labor Day (aside from exceptions like this season’s Cal-Hawaii game, which was played in Australia on Aug. 27). However, with growing conversation about expansion of the College Football Playoff, the caveat of switching up the football calendar has come along. Men’s DI college basketball famously celebrates its official start to practice with Midnight Madness. The best example for changing the calendar comes from NCAA baseball, which addressed the issue as one of competitive balance favoring warm weather teams. In 2008, DI baseball adopted a uniform start date of Feb. 22 and, at the time, considered reducing the number of games played from 56 to 52. Now, some coaches are calling for the season to be shifted to summer.

It appears that, compared to many legislative issues, the NCAA is open to recommendations about sport-specific calendars, which means that a recommendation from the coaches association carries a lot of weight.

This series of ideas might seem like it's coming out of left field, but now is the time to consider these options. The NCAA Tournament format is set through 2018, but rumblings indicate that the NCAA would consider a dramatic proposal to change the format for 2019. That proposal is most likely to come from the Intercollegiate Men’s Lacrosse Coaches Association, whose Convention begins Dec. 9.

If the coaches and the NCAA are open to it, I think they’d be wise to consider more wholesale changes to when, where and how many games are played.

FOOTNOTES

1Last season, the Golden Griffins player their first game on March 5. Their opponent was Boston University, who was 4-1 at the time. Their last regular season game was scheduled for April 23. In those 49 days, they played 11 games. In their regular season finale, they hosted Detroit. The high was 54 in Buffalo that day. Had they not qualified for the MAAC Tournament, their season would’ve ended 37 days before Maryland’s and North Carolina’s.

2Here’s a macro-economic look at the expense of housing men’s lacrosse players later into the summer. Some assumptions and making the math easier:

The cost of room and board varies considerably across the 71 institutions that sponsor DI MLAX. Assume it averages to $5,000

Assume 40 players per roster have their room and board covered (much higher than actual)

Assume that that $5,000 covers the expenses for 200 days of residence

The total spent to house DI lacrosse players is $14,000,000 per year, and the per-day cost of housing each player is $25 (14,000,000 divided by 560,000 — players (71 x 40) x days (200)).

Assuming that every DI men’s lacrosse university’s academic calendar ends the last Saturday in April (the current end to the regular season), the number of total additional days is:

Extended regular season: 70 programs (2800 players) x 14 days = 39,200 additional days housed



Extended conference tournament: 42 programs (1680 players) x 7 days = 11,760 additional days housed



Extended first round/Quarterfinals: 16 programs (640 players) x 7 days = 4480



Extended Semifinals: 4 programs (160 players) x 7 days = 1120



Extended Championship: 2 programs (80 players) x 7 days = 560

Based on these estimates, the cost of housing a team is $7,000 per week. The total cost of the additions to the end of the calendar is $1,428,000. The additional cost for the NCAA Tournament is $154,000.

3I’ve seen it suggested that this plan is self-interested, and that Inside Lacrosse would benefit from this restructure. I can provide assurances that this is not the case. In fact, a better argument could be made that enacting this plan would be injurious to www.insidelacrosse.com’s web audience; the expansion of games into February has correlated with significant growth of the site’s audience. I’m making these suggestions despite that because I think it’s in the best interest of lacrosse at large.