All this tells me is that the MVC is a pathetic shadow of the league it was. In all seriousness, could you even imagine the MVC of five years ago considering an Omaha or a KC or -- take any blinders you have and throw them away -- a Milwaukee in its current state? The idea is absurd. We are a sinking low major program right now. Attendance (and interest) have collapsed. Administrative incompetence and neglect -- both benign and malign -- hang like dark shadows over the entire athletic program and especially over men's basketball.

Yet even as diluted as the MoVal is now it would be much more beneficial for Milwaukee than Milwaukee would be for it. So how does that make sense for the conference? If they are doing their due diligence the conference Presidents should be asking whether they really trust that the Milwaukee administration won't drop the program into D3 if real attendance doesn't triple or quadruple within a few years. (Anyone want to bet it will under our current mismanagement and the continuing alienation of so much of the fan base?) This is a one bid league MoVal that cannot contribute any significant dollars to new members' coffers, and the league knows it. With the departures of multiple marquee programs in the last ten years they are left to cast for life preservers. But as one reporter put it, it's "a sea of bad options, [where] Valparaiso is the best." Yikes. Remember, that's a POST-Drew Valpo. Their best option! And yet it's hard to disagree. Given the desperate condition of our basketball program, the fund-raising and management incompetence of our current administration and the ever tightening noose that the Regents and the Governor are applying to Milwaukee, compared even to a small religious University with no TV market in a town about the size of West Bend an hour from the nearest commercial airport, we look more like an anchor than a float.

It all fell apart so fast.